Links & Suggestions # 7: videogame birthdays, pirates, industry assholes, nanometers and super-consoles

February 12, 2009 · Filed Under Babel fish, Links & Suggestions 

Babel fish - A mental interface between Sir Arthur's sensibility and the events from the outer world. And for all the rest, too If technology is inclined to constantly project itself onward leaving very few room for remembering products that were so popular just some time before, Jake Gyllenhaal acting as the Prince of Persia is convincing as a cactus in a melodrama. If Doom is an historic videogame that deserves to be remembered for its birthday, pirates once again prove to be the only ones capable of saving the media world from the current DRM madness. And if the reading of this paragraph has a meaning for you then I would suggest to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, but a good one. Or the reading of a good grammar book. I am dispensed from the second, at least :-P

  • 15 years in hell. The last December 10 has marked the anniversary of Doom release, the PC videogame that for many has been the one that “started it all”. Personally I was already breaking keyboards and collecting virii since some years before, but there’s no doubt that the id Software shooter deserve a special place within the list of the most important entertainment software ever. Now I can’t help but say two things: A) Sooner or later I’ll play Doom from the start, obviously on my MS-DOS 6.20 partition :-P B) IDDQD, IDKFA, and now camon everybody :-D Offworld goes to hell.

  • ASCII graphics before the Internet. As an old DOS user I’ve got a good experience with graphic reproductions through textual characters, and I well remember some real art that quite often accompanied the “warez” versions of games and software that my loyal trafficker brought me before I could afford the Internet. However I didn’t imagine that there was who tried to draw in ASCII with typewriters in the prehistoric age in which there were no computers. Really true that you never stop learning… ASCII Art: Older Than The Internet.

  • VHS format is officially dead. The old magnetic tape videocassettes standard ceased to exist as a product when the last wholesaler announced to Los Angeles Times that he put an end to VHS after the last Christmas. Hence the next time I’ll be obliged to buy a combo player Blu-ray/VHS to continue to “enjoy” the very low resolution of my original copy of the (first) Star Wars trilogy. Oh well, look how time passes… R.I.P: VHS officially dead.

  • Interview with Disney’s Prince of Persia. After the shots stolen on the set from the spin-off of the well-known videogame saga, in the last months appeared on-line the first behind the scenes including an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal, the not so much convincing star of the movie coming in 2010. I continue to repeat that if Hollywood makes a mistake with the Prince there will be some head cut off, and not only metaphorically :-P Jake interview and first video footage.

  • Intel gets ready for 32 nanometers CPUs. The processors technology is surely one of those that, as initially said, runs at speeds that are unsustainable for any other product. So while IBM states to be ahead of two years at least on its competitor with a manufacturing process ready for 22 nanometers, Intel has announced to have completed the development of its new 32 nm CPUs, code name Westmere, the architectural evolution of Nehalem/Core i7 coming within 2010. Other than the transistors’ dimensions reduction, Westmere will feature the integration of graphic controller on the processor’s die, the nth motherboard element to be “assimilated” by the CPU after Nehalem had done the same with memory controller. Intel completes 32-nanometer chip development & Intel gives details on new 32nm Westmere processors.

  • The endless poor figure of Electronic Arts management. That EA and the other videogames megacorporations are leaded by such prize idiots is a consolidated matter of fact. But the idiocies they made are then paid up, as they deserve: the class action against the Spore DRM advances and grows bigger, Melissa Thomas isn’t on board anymore but on the other hand the legal firm KamberEdelson (that already got back at Sony for its revolting CD-Audio rootkit) continues to gather together plaintiffs against the anti-copy technologies used by EA in its games. Spore, obviously, has been the most pirated game of 2008, and as much as obviously it has been stripped off of SecuROM (the aforementioned DRM technology) when it appeared on Steam. If this isn’t an asshole-alike behaviour… EA SecuROM Suits Moving Forward & Spore the Most Pirated Game of 2008 & EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM.

  • Piracy is good. “Piracy”, when it isn’t leaded to profit, is a wonderful thing. Pirates (including myself) will bring the birth of a new (legitimate) system for contents delivery, they will force the industry to rethink copyright, they will save the digital culture heritage for posterity and will free it from the DRM madness, they will democratize knowledge and consciousness of the fact that the world is changed. Forever. BBC has noticed it, now whose turn is it. You will be assimilated, one after another. Resistance is futile. BBC Relies on ‘Pirate’ Audio To Bring Back Lost TV Show via Digg.

  • 200 PlayStation 3 crack SSL. Maybe PS3 isn’t the top when talking about videogames, but the Sony console surely has a substantial computing power on its side. The proof is the fact that a team of hackers used PS3 to exploit a vulnerability in the MD5 hashing algorithm and to make up a Certification Authority (CA) with which be able to create their own SSL certificates, virtually malicious if in the hands of cyber-criminals. To succeed the crack took up 6 months and a cluster of 200 PS3s working in parallel, but the final result is undoubtedly top flight. PlayStation 3 used to hack SSL, Xbox used to play Boogie Bunnies via Digg.

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