ShadowForge Computers

April 17, 2009; Swedish Couts found the defendants quilty, each sentenced to a year in jail, they were also ordered to pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.6 million) in damage to copyright .

This is a sad and happy day.

While the defendants didn’t store any files on the website itself they did link torrent users together with file tracking.

Now it appears the the site is still up at the time of this writing, how long it stays that way I currently don’t know. What does this mean to the file sharing community.

This is where the happy part comes in. Every time something like this occurs, a newer way is found and I don’t expect this to be any different. As file sharing methods end up controlled of shutdown others rise to take it’s place. These are usually better than previous versions. When Bittorrents came out and became the mainstream file sharing method major companies started using it as well, most notably, Blizzard uses torrents to distrubite their patches for World of Warcraft, with others soon following suit.

As with any conflict, be it in the world oconcerning techonolgy, progress of some sort will be made. This can mean great things to come, be also a possibility of slowing down for a while. Either way the results of this case will echo across the web for a while.

An appeal to the courts desicion is planned in hope to overturn verdict.

Over the years, as chips get smaller and smaller, so to has the computer.  We are going to take a look back at the size of computers over the last couple of years and where the technology is heading.

First up, the Shuttle Lan boxes small form factor:

Shuttle has been doing barebone systems for gamers and those that need space for years and the systems are getting smaller and smaller. As with show with the Shutt above, full featured PC take up less space than a notebook.

Next up we have the now popular netbooks.

Take a Laptop and compress it to the size of a small hardback book or large paperback novel and you have the new net book. With the use of solid state drives and and ever shrinking processors, the netbook is fast becoming the choice for people on the go that don’t want to carry the larger laptops.

Now this next one I’m rather interested in. nVidia’s new ION bases systems.

The upcoming ION based systems, which will be will be everything from a Netbook to a full blown desktop system will maintaining the same power across all platforms looks to be an upcoming contender for the Processor market. While nVidia is boasting lower pricing for these products because of the minimal components needed to make these systems only time will tell if these will take they’re fair share of the processor market.

Where is this all leading us. For that only time will tell, but with the development of Flexible OLED screens and ever shrinking computer components, high powered portable computing shouldn’t be that far off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fully fuctional touch screen computer system that offers the power of today’s high end gaming computer.

Security Token

Square Enix Account Security: On April 7, 2009, Square-Enix will start selling their security token to help protect PlayOnline accounts from getting hacked. And I say it’s about time.  With this Square-Enix will be catching up with Blizzard on thier security for their online games.

Over the past couple of weeks I have heard people saying that the token will not be as successfully as Square-Enix thinks it will be. Though based on how Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Security token, I must say that those people are going to be wrong. Every time that Blizzard has teh Security token for sale on their site they quickly sell out, though the tokens can be found on eBay, they have such a huge markup it’s insane in some cases. Prices for the Blizzard Token on ebay range from $7.50 - $64.99 for the standard one, and $75 - $85 for the BlizCon version.

The Square-Enix Security Token will be selling for $9.99 including tax and shipping and will be able to be used after the April 8th Version update.  Being a current FFXI player I know I will be ording mine as-soon-as they are avaiable for sale. Sadly though I wish that this was out soon as a Linkshell member of mine has recently been hacked and was not able to recover his character since it had been recovered once already.

Assassin’s Creed 2:

One of my favorite 360 games looks like it’s getitng a sequel. The teaser trailer was released and avaiable for viewing.

Google Expands deal with CVS:

Before I get started with this one, poeple my remember my comments about Google on my March 14th post and think I disapprove the workings of Google.  Quite the opposit acctully, with Google doing more and more they are creating computition with other companies which will expand in growth (in my opinion) on all fronts. Google’s deal with CVS will allow CVS customers to view their prescription and health information online with Google Heath.

"We now offer all of our consumers the ability to download their prescription and medication history into their Google Health Personal Health Record, whether they are CVS/pharmacy customers, CVS Caremark plan participants or visitors to our MinuteClinic locations," said CVS Caremark Executive Vice President Helena Foulkes in a statement. "By enabling patients to download their prescription information directly into their personal health record, we are helping to close the gap in today's fragmented health care system and provide a full view of a patient's health."

With the ever expanding need for peoples Health Information to be easily accessible and in one place I welcome this addition of service to and ever growing world.

The Last Remnant:

Published by Square-Enix, The Last Remnant makes use of the Unreal Engine for graphics, and I must say it does a great job at that. If you give this game a try, make sure you have plenty of cooling for your video card, I’m running a Saphire 4850 with the fan @ 100% with a slot fan to help cooling and it still gets upto 85c-90c.

The battle system is different from the normal RPG fare, instead of telling each person what to do, you give your part a command and they carry out the order the best they can. Also with this game, the monsters you fight do appear to get harder as you level up.

Though the demo is shot, it still gives a good feel for the game.  This title is differently worth a try at the least.

Conflickr or Confail:

Well April 1st was the Computer Virus Doomsday with the infamous Conflickr virus expecting an update. Needless to say all the hype that was built up about this threat seems pointless. Though it probably did get a lot of people to update their systems and made sure the Anti-Virus software was working.

Processor Market:

What a mess this is coming out to be. We have our two big processor manufacturers Intel and AMD, VIA mad a small splash with the Netbooks and died out again under Intel’s foot, and now Samsung and NVidia are throwing the gauntlets down.

While I do prefer AMD over Intel mostly due to pricing and most “real world applications” Intel does have the performance. I would love to see Intel knocked down a peg or two but it is going to be hard for any company to chip away at the cpu giant.  Here’s hoping the new comers will get a share of the market away from Intel.

Square-Enix: Project:Rapture

Square-Enix annouced that they will be revealing Project:Rapture thier secret MMO that they have been working on. They plan to run it and FFXI at the same time. Very little information about what Project:Rapture really is has been release. It has been confirmed that it is not a sequel to FFXI, but has not been said if it has any releation to the Final Fantasy series.

Final Fantasy Tatics: Revisted

Though I put the title down not that long after I got it the first time. I felt it was time to go back to this little gem and start playing again. Now since I had a spare PSP lying around I decided to get a copy for my friend as well so we could play the Multiplayer modes in it. Though the battles still take a while to do it has been a fun ride to do them. At first he was using a copy of my save to use, we since have decided to restart both out games and put down the rule that we could not use the main character in the Multiplayer battles and missions. It’s going to be interesting to see how we each develop our teams.

Star Ocean: Second Evolution

I’ve been waiting for this title to come out for a while now, and I went and missed the release date. Though I’m going to have to wait to pick it up, but if they kept to the original I see my wife wanting to get me her a copy and her own PSP…..(no I will not buy the Pink Hello Kitty PSP)…(ok maybe with some serious bribes).

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

This is a game my friend and I have been waiting for awhile. Set to release later this year, from what I’ve seen the graphics on it look great. Though time will tell how the game play is.

Atlantis: Found on Google Earth?

If true, the archaeological community would be throwing a fit right about now.

Taking some time out of his day, a British aeronautical engineer crusing around on Google Earth 5.0 stumbles what appears to be a pattern that looks like roads off the coast of Afircia.

According to Goolge these “roads” are artifacts from when the sea floor was scanned with Sonar and denote the path that the ship took. Some people would call it a cover up others just nonsense that it is Atlantis. Either way, I call it an interesting find.

For those of you who do have Google Earth 5.0 you can see these at the cordinates: 13 15′15.53N, 24 15′30.53W

Have you found something intesting on Google Earth. Leave a comment with the Cords and share with others.

Google Tangles with Microsoft:

Well it looks like Goliath 0.5 is going after Goliath in this one.  Google is looking at helping the European Commission prove antitrust charges against Microsoft in refernce to Internet Explorer.  Now don’t get me wrong I’m not a big fan of IE, far from it, I’ve been using Firefox for years and prefer it to this day, but it seems that Google itself is getting expanisionist here. Google has been slowly developing a slew of software over the years for just about everything, image editing, word processing, spreadsheets, medical information, 3d modeling, and there are more and likely working on even more. Along those same lines though I understand Google is trying to get it’s share of the Internet Browser market, but thier entry into the market, while interesting at first. . . well the novelty of it wore thin after a while. Chrome has a lot of good ideas with it, but it needs some more refinement.

Now I’m going to make a suggestion here, and if by some chance of fate that someone at Microsoft finds it and thinks it a good idea, just keep in mind I wouldn’t mind a small consaultation fee. Take, oh say, the top 3-5 browsers out there and include them in the OS installation, make it an option as you install, select the one you want at that time and install it with your OS, or for OEM builds have it as an option when you first connect to the internet on which to install automatically.

Phantasy Star Portable

Okay, information on Phantasy Star Portable has been out for a while on this game and it has been released in demo on the Playstation Store since the 5th of Feb. How I missed this I have no clue, I feel like I’ve been under a gaming rock for the past few months.

The game is expect to come out this upcoming March.

Project: Rapture

This has to be one of the most tight lipped projects I can think of. Square-Enix has been working on this upcoming MMO for almost 5 years now, or so rumors say.  There are a few things that are known about this upcoming MMO.

It is being developed with Square-Enix’s “Crystal Tools” , and various official information releases have stated the it will be for Xbox 360 and PC; while others state Xbox 360, PC, and PS3.

Square-Enix has said that they game will not be a sequel to the Final Fantasy XI Online, and that they want to take a different direction with it from the onset. Though I feel, and several of friends as well, that it will be Final Fantasy in nature, Square-Enix is want to have it online and available as well as their current MMO Final Fantasy XI.

Google wins Street View Privacy Act

A couple in Pittsburg, sued Google about photos of their home appearing on Google Maps, alleging that Google “significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests” when
Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked
“private road.”

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Now I don’t know about you, but this does seem like a waste of legal resources. For years now, aerial photos and satalite images have been avaiable for almost everywhere in the known world with a level of detail that can make most people cringe. With all of this avaible for anyone with the common sense to make use of the internet, who is going to be the next target of such law suits?

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Yeah, yeah, I know the page has been redone yet again. I went to update to the new version of Wordpress and ended up missing something up and killed the whole site… again. This time I did a manual install of the system instead of the automated and it’s working alot better now.

It’s going to take a little bit of time to get this setup to where I want to go with it, but in the end I think I’m going to like this a lot better than some of the previous incarnations of the site. So hang in there with me and this will get going quiet nicely.