Casual gaming? A parallel market
What do the (relatively) recent exploit of Nintendo’s Wii console, the iPhone popularity and the videogaming velleities of social networks like Facebook share? They all are facts which have contributed to open the video games market to a broader and broader audience, establishing the principle that casual gaming, that kind of ludic activity which does not force you to know the magic sequence “WASD” or the difference between a hack’n slash and a “pure” role playing game, is a growing phenomenon that will eventually shape the entire industry alongside its traditional technological and commercial models.
A.D. 2012, The Art of Video Games exhibit in Washington D.C.
If the world won’t end before with a huge and yet wee galactic fart, in 2012 there is a date to pin down on the agenda for who will be lucky enough to be around Washington D.C. In the United States capital city, and more exactly at the prestigious Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibit The Art of Video Games will be held between March 16 and September 9, 2012, a systematic, interactive and visually rich journey centered on the history of the first 40 years of the videogaming medium.
Dolphin emulates New Super Mario Bros. Wii at 1080p
I had already talked about Dolphin’s remarkable qualities in a previous post, being it the only emulator currently capable of replicating a Nintendo Wii console on PC and running some commercial games. Another, impressive confirmation of the emulator capabilities comes from this YouTube video (via Joystick Division), that in a single shot shows off what the recently added Full HD video clips viewing (1080p, or 1920×1080 pixels) is really useful for while it demonstrates the growing Dolphin compatibility with the latest games published for the Nintendo console.
“Solo” the Pentagon cracker very close to extradition to USA
Gary McKinnon lost another battle in his long legal war against the extradition to United States when, some days ago, Home Secretary of United Kingdom refused to examine the new medical evidence submitted by the defendant. In a letter dated November 26 and directed to lawyer Karen Todner, Secretary Alan Johnson expressed his “firm view that McKinnon’s extradition would not be incompatible with his human rights“, therefore “his extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith“.
MESS emulates Philips CD-i. For free
This news would have come out a bit earlier if I hadn’t have to deal with some other stuff, nevertheless the subject is interesting and deserves to be reported anyway: MESS, MAME twin emulator which embraces its philosophy of completeness and accuracy shifting the focus from the arcades to the home machines hardware, has recently added support for Philips CD-i, ie what almost certainly is the worst videogame “console” ever appeared in the not-so-young history of the medium.
KarmaKula chapter 8: “Flowers of Illusion”
The Karma Kula’s journey is about to end, and in Flowers of Illusion the lonely demon hunter playing as the protagonist of the live action series from Ninjai Gang finally arrives near the temple of “Queen Putah” (corrections on the name are welcome) where the unlucky monks are tortured (…) and drained of their vital semen. The oddities and the funny moments of the previous episodes are far away here, while the demon makes her appearance in a rather unfavorable situation for the health of our hero and the fulfillment of his mission.
AV-Comparatives feels the pulse of the IT security
During the past weeks AV-Comparatives released the results of its latest antivirus software tests. Report n.23 follows the previous one released in May but it tackles, as the Austrian experts usually do, malware detection rates achieved by the antivirus programs when confronting a test bed of known threats.
Lucidity, creativity sparks from LucasArts
LucasArts is the historic software house constantly praised for its past full of pixellated pirates, purebred graphic adventures and more generally for a particular skill in shaping stories, creating characters and forging game worlds in which it was worth diving into for a while. In a manner that is nearly unbelievable for who is accustomed to see the company bringing out the usual, boring and useless series of Star Wars sequels, LucasArts is now faintly reconciliating with the development of original titles thanks to a game with little ambitions that could say something about the forthcoming future of the respected developer of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango.
AntiVir Personal is 10 years old and Avira gives its customers a gift
It’s celebration time for Avira, the German security company headquartered in the little town of Tettnang best known for its renowned antivirus software. AntiVir Personal, the free antivirus offered by Avira to its customers has recently marked its tenth anniversary, and to properly celebrate the occasion the company prepared a special offer for who decided to purchase one of its commercial products within the next few days.
How the security industry reacts to a bootkit maker
Austrian eighteen years old Peter Kleissner recently become famous for being the author of Stoned, the tool which exploits Master Boot Record rootkits techniques to bypass Microsoft operating systems protections and allow the execution of unauthorized code - be it legit or not. But the popularity the young programmer gained thanks to Stoned caused disagreeing reactions by security market companies.
KarmaKula chapter 7: “The Riverboat”
The Karma Kula’s journey goes on even though our hero has to be in company of the little pesty monk saved in the previous chapter. As it was widely predictable The Riverboat marks the reunion between the apprentice monk and his master, while the Karma Kula plays a little gooseberry considering that the old priest doesn’t like who “makes his living by his sword“.
Induc, the silent Beast that puzzles antivirus companies
In the last part of August, the malware known as Induc was the subject of reports and alerts from the main antivirus and security software manufacturers. Kaspersky, the Russian company that claims to have been the first to detect and report it, returns to look more closely at the issue revealing some important details on what seems like a unique case in the recent malicious software landscape.
CCleaner tops 320 million downloads
CCleaner, one of those tiny, precious must-have tools to keep the PC in good shape and safeguard one’s own privacy by a single click, has been downloaded more than 320 million times. Piriform developer states the numbers on the program homepage, and together with the announcement the company released the new CCleaner version implementing (among the other things) a better Windows 7 support and a user interface tidying up.
Why The Fool blocks Google Safe-Browsing
The Fool is an Italian start-up founded by Matteo Flora, a security consultant known for having helped Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset to put together the data required to bring a 500 million euros lawsuit against Google and YouTube in July 2008. On the blog of FoolDNS, the main product offered by The Fool, the company has recently explained the reasons why Google Safe-Browsing is part of the service blacklist hence it is blocked for users and companies which use it.
The 5 all-time worst malware according to Trend Micro
Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security enterprise with over 4,000 employees in more than 30 countries, has recently asked the experts from TrendLabs (its global research organization) to make an updated list of the worst computer plagues ever. The resulting list includes 5 noteworthy examples of widespread infections which represented, during their respective period of wider circulation, the most dangerous security threats users and companies could have faced.
New tricks for file viruses
File viruses are only a small part of nowadays malicious code diversified landscape, and yet these ancient malware designed to infect legitimate software by parasitizing its executable routines continue, every now and then, to hit the headlines with news worth the attention. The latest couple of examples of this remarkable endurance ability affects an old but still popular development environment and the most known among CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs.
Radiohead play with BitTorrent
After having experienced the largely unexplored territories of unhindered digital distribution thanks to In Rainbows, after having “shot” the entirely digital video clip from House of Cards, Radiohead continue to seek alternative ways to reach fans and innovate the music market by releasing their latest song on the BitTorrent P2P network.
KarmaKula chapter 6: “Big Monk, Little Monk”
Refreshed by the bath full of blood and human haslet of chapter 5, the protagonist of the new live action series from the Ninjai Gang resumes his journey toward the cursed mountain (so to speak). But the Karma Kula is that kind of protagonist which never lacks nuisances, whereby in Big Monk, Little Monk our hero runs into a little and noisy apprentice monk fallen victim of a misadventure while he was travelling with his master.
Dolphin R3661 brings Wii and Super Mario Galaxy on the PC
As the yet partial success obtained by PCSX2 with PlayStation 2 emulation demonstrates, adequately recreating the last generations videogaming machines on a PC screen - it doesn’t matter how much powerful and advanced equipped CPUs and GPUs are - isn’t an easy task. For this reason the results recently achieved by GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin are exceptional to say the least and let foresee a bright future for the Nintendo machines emulation “scene”.
The Interplanetary Internet lands on the International Space Station
During the first week of July, the Interplanetary Internet conceived by Vint Cerf (formerly co-creator of the TCP/IP protocol at the foundations of “terrestrial” Internet) and by NASA engineers earned what should be its first permanent node in the outer space. During the second of a long series of tests to verify the reliability of the Delay-Tolerant Networking (also known as Disruption-Tolerant Networking) protocol, the software needed for its functioning was transferred aboard the International Space Station orbiting at 350 kilometers above the Earth.
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