Promote retrogaming by purchasing retro-games
If there’s something that the new digital store Good Old Games has clearly emphasized is the fact that retrogaming can become a business, but at its heart there must necessarily be the passion and the commitment of hobbyists able to feed that business with their coding and software engineering efforts. Without projects amateurish in shape but extremely sophisticated in essence like DOSBox and ScummVM, to say it frankly, probably GOG.com would have never opened.
SIAE, a denial that does not deny anything
No, SIAE has nothing to do with the draft of the bill released by Altroconsumo in the past days. Replying to the clamour provoked by the document floating on-line, a supposed anticipation of the final work of an anti-piracy committee that has just been established, the organization now denies any authorship on it. The denial, anyway, does not explain anything about who wrote that document nor why it is so ostentatiously unbalanced in favour of the interests of SIAE itself.
Anti-piracy committee, incompetence always rules
Congratulations, congratulations, the Technical committee against digital and multimedia piracy is born in the Italian ruling rooms, seriously determined to defeat the file sharing phenomenon and above all to have a special care for the industry associations’ desires, whose only purpose has always been to pull out money from any single bit moved on-line. SIAE (the Italian RIAA) is already giving rigorous orders on what to do, so much for the good intentions on the will to listen to representatives of all the parts interested to the matter.
Waiting to enlist providers, RIAA continues to attend in courts
RIAA and the recording majors have said it pretty clearly, that they plan to abandon the path of the legal persecution of single file sharing users to focus on the direct cooperation of ISPs. Waiting to see what such strategy shift will actually mean, for now the USA labels association is engaged on more fronts including those courts which have served for its crusade against P2P.
Conficker, the perfect storm worm
The Conficker worm, also known as Downup, Downadup or Kido, is floating around since October 2008. Security firms know it pretty well, and in the past days the malware has become known as much well to users too having infected a significant amount of machines all over the world. We have returned to the “good” old times of Sasser, Blaster and Mydoom outbreaks, and the already worrisome proliferation of the worm threatens to get even worse because of some conditions that increasingly support its spreading.
The rootkit in the soul
If there’s a defect that have always profoundly conditioned my life it is undoubtedly the almost supernatural ability to choose the most twisted way to face a problem or a situation. A girl says to me she’s in love with someone other? I profess her my unconditional love for life. My father has retired and his company needs a new storekeeper? I leave and come to Bologna to go hungry in search for something that very probably doesn’t even exist.
MAME 0.129(u1), the new year among lasergames and emulated multiplayer
The first two weeks of 2009 have marked significant news for MAME, the most advanced and complex arcade machines emulator kicking around. The development cycle of the main release 0.129 has ended and another one has unfolded to lead the code toward the next version 0.130, in the middle the Nicola Salmoria and mamedev’s virtual machine has brought further, radical changes, the likelihood that in the future there will be multiplayer for those games that comprise it and the emulation of two new laserdisc videogames.
Free 6 months license for Avira AntiVir Premium
Avira GmbH, the renowned German security firm which develops the Avira AntiVir antivirus, is running a special promotion in collaboration with PC Welt (the localized edition of PC World magazine) giving away to users a free 6 months license for AntiVir Premium, lately proclaimed the best antivirus of 2008 by AV-Comparatives.
22,000 new malware samples per day, a network worm breakout and the sandbox-enabled antivirus
From a computer security standpoint, 2008 surely has been a year of passion. Nay worse, it has been a dramatic year characterized by figures beyond any imagination, a steady hammering of new threats that has lasted till the end and that is expected to be the same or even worse during this year.
Videogames highlights - December 2008
Gone-by is the fuddle of Christmas days, when the videogaming hits have as usual flooded the shelves and the e-stores in a relatively narrowed period of time. And 2009 already appears, if possible, even more promising and full of worthy releases among space MMOGs, great comebacks and some unhealthy newborns of an industry desperately in search for ideas. Sometimes the wrong ones.
My last purchase on eBay
It was since a long, long time that I didn’t join in the eBay virtual marketplace, and though I don’t frankly know how during the end-of-year holidays I’ve felt a vague desire to return back and make some purchases. Such desire has coupled with the evocation of memories on one of the first PCs I’ve ever seen in action in my life, maybe not the first and surely not the first I’ve got, nevertheless the Olivetti Prodest PC1 has been the system that transferred me this strange disease that makes you love machines made of metal and bits that is personal computing.
RIAA’s new year doesn’t start well
The holidays between the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 haven’t been particularly pleasant for RIAA and the music majors: the America most hated organization (at least as of Internet) is (supposedly) about to change its legal strategy against file sharing by directly engaging providers, but meanwhile one of these ISP raises a monetary issue that does not promise an easy start for the bizarre joint venture between copyright owners and connectivity providers.
Made in Italy: radioactive politics isn’t renewable
It’s a New Year, the perfect occasion to begin a new series entitled “Made in Italy”. Which however won’t talk about fashion, pizza or Ferrari but more practically about the true exclusive products of the current “Italy system”, that is organized crime, corruption, mental degeneration conveyed by television and genetic tendency to support fascism disguised as well-being or its illusion.
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