Video game recording, screenshot capturing and benchmarking software sees major update

If you're nuts about screenshotting your PC game sessions like us, you've certainly heard of the popular video game screenshot and recording software FRAPS. While WeGame does about the same job and is free, it doesn't support every title like FRAPS, or have benchmarking capabilities. In any case, it's a very well-built, minimalistic program that gets the job done.

FRAPS gets even better today with the major 3.0.0 update, bringing with it a new look, Ventrilo and TeamSpeak support, Windows 7 compatibility, NVIDIA 3D Vision support (yep, you can record in 3D now), and more.

Hit up the source to grab the latest version.

30 yuan can go a long way

Windows 7 has been big hit in China, according to early reports. Copies have been flying off the shelves. Much of them pirated.

While the Beijing government has been making some in-roads in curbing excessive piracy, it seems they still have a long way to go. According to a student quoted in the English language, government-run news agency China Daily, pirated copies of the new operating system continue to be sold openly in many malls and markets, and you can get a pirated copy of Windows 7 (non-beta presumably) for 20 yuan (which is about $3 bucks USD).

Microsoft has lowered the price of Windows 7 many Asian countries, including China, in order to better accommodate the general wealth disparity of the average folks, from the West to the East. In China MS's newest OS has had a significant price cut, and is now selling for a world-low price of $58 USD. But for many Chinese, this price seems absurdly high.

Concerns over losing market dominance might be keeping Microsoft reluctant to finding more ways to make their software more resistant to piracy -- but certainly, the company will be trying hard through marketing and political pressure to encourage mainland Chinese to purchase legitimate copies.

The piracy situation could not be much worse this time around than what happened with earlier MS operating systems. Despite a massive, multi-million dollar advertising campaign, Vista was thought to be an abysmal sales failure in China, according to third party analysts (Microsoft declined to release sales figures). Just the concept of buying an OS seems to be somewhat an unusual proposition to the average person in People's Republic -- last year this week, there was massive rage throughout the Chinese blogosphere over changes to the Windows Genuine Advantage that caused pirated desktop backgrounds to turn black.

The Asian piracy of Windows 7 isn't only limited to China of course -- the picture above was a taken in the Philippines, where the OS is selling for about $1.50.

See Unigine's 'Heaven' in action in these videos

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's Windows 7 release, software developer Unigine has unleashed the world's first DirectX 11 benchmark unto the world after five years of development, dubbing it 'Heaven.'

Unigine's engine makes use of hardware tesselation, a feature that has been present on ATI graphics card for a few generations, but is now being put to full use. Without going into too much detail, it adds polygons within polygons so developers can use compressed JPEG images without sacrificing image quality. In other words, we get better looking graphics and, best of all, without a performance hit on DirectX 11 hardware. The video below show's tesselation in action compared to low quality textures rendered normally.

As you can see, the benchmark is nothing short of impressive and, surprisingly, performance is actually pretty good.

In case you haven't picked up an HD5000-series card yet, the benchmark is also backward compatible with DirectX 9 and 10 as well as OpenGL. However, only the full blown DirectX 11 can take advantage of the latest features including DirectCompute and tesselation. If you're still riding the XP bandwagon, you will need to upgrade in order to enjoy those latest advancements in graphics technologies.

Oh and if you feel the urge to start your own game studio and use Unigine's product, it's going to cost you right around $25,000. Of course, it's easier to simply pick up an HD5000 card while waiting for one of the upcoming DirectX 11 titles including DiRT 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Aliens vs Predator or the already-released Battleforge.

Quarterly profit at Xbox 360 division rises 96 percent despite flat sales

Microsoft as a whole was stung with an 14 percent year-on-year decline in profit for its most recent fiscal quarter ending September 30th.  A 39 percent drop in revenue from sales of Windows and Windows Live products didn't help, and this was attributed the sheer amount of revenue invested in the software giant's Windows 7 pre-order programs.  The overall profit decline was still smaller than what analysts had previously projected. Another bright spot proved to be Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, home of the Zune and Xbox 360 businesses, boosted by demand for the Xbox 360.

The E&D's revenue only slightly increased to $1.89 billion USD, but this still led to $312 million USD in quarterly profit.  This is nearly double the $159 million USD profit earned during the same three-month period back in 2008.  Xbox 360 hardware shipments also fell slightly to 2.1 millino units for the quarter. Profitability was achieved in light of fairly flat sales through decreased Xbox 360 platform costs, further illustrating the benefits of continually maintaining console production processes. Microsoft also achieved mastery in September by making up nearly 32 percent of the gaming industry's overall revenue through hardware and software sales, as tracked by the NPD Group.

Microsoft's general manager of investor relations, Bill Koefoed, underlined confidence in the company's Xbox 360 business and confirmed in this morning's earnings call that the platform now benefits from an 8.7 software attach ratio.  This means an average of 8.7 Xbox 360 games are sold for each console. Furthermore, the Xbox 360's global install base has now hit over 34 million units, an increase of 3 million units over just this past two months.  Xbox Live revenues also increased 50 percent.

Virus, spyware & malware protection in free 5MB download

If you like free, and perhaps are discontent with your current computer security solution, Microsoft late yesterday launched its rebranded and rehauled application suite Security Essentials, replacing Windows Live OneCare (terrible name, really), which you may want to check out.

Essentials is the full package, offering protection against viruses, spyware and malware, and comes in a 5MB download, designed to be easy to install and work well on even low-powered PCs. The suite runs on operating systems from Windows XP SP2 onward, including Windows 7.

Other security vendors aren't terribly worried at the moment about Microsoft as a threat, as they've yet to prove themselves a solid competitor in this arena, so only time will tell if Essentials has what it takes. Mostly, it's felt this will replace other current free software as opposed to the advantages of paid. In the meantime, we know Symnatec has been bashing it for some time now, while independent testing firm AV-Test GmbH has commended it.

Alex Eckelberry, chief executive of Sunbelt Software states Microsoft's move is one intended to compete with Apple and improve their image as a security-oriented corporation. Ultimately, he says, it's good for the consumer.

Grab Security Essentials via the link below. 

Love or love not Windows 7, this is a great deal -- other countries' offers upcoming

Microsoft will be selling Windows 7 to interested post-secondary students, for a limited time, for a dang-low price. For an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, UK students will be able to pick it up for £30, while US students will only be charged $30.

It seems that you'll be able to upgrade to Premium or Professional, so it is unclear as to why anyone would choose Premium. Anyways: keep in mind you'll need a valid, existing copy of Windows to upgrade from. But if you don't have a valid copy of XP or Vista, it appears that you can be extra thrifty (and somewhat sneaky) by getting a valid beta code for the beta version of Windows 7, download that for free, install that, and than upgrade from their.

So far, only the details for the U.K students have been put out there by Microsoft. But other big countries will be getting this deal to, including: Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico, France, and Germany. The US offer will open up very soon, apparently. Any moment now.

Students will verified by their email address: so you'll want one that ends in the suffix ".edu".

The offer will start on October 1st, and you'll be able to download Windows 7 when it comes out on the 22nd. The offer will end in early March it seems.

Here's a Neoseeker Public Service Announcement: Being a student can put you in rough financial shape, but if you can pick up an OS that could conceivably last you 5-8 years or more, you just might want to skip a couple of pizzas, and a few cases of beer, to grab this deal while it is available. Or use Linux!

Grab some Windows 7 features early

Newly available from Microsoft is a Platform Update for the Windows Vista users out there; the public beta package incorporates a multitude of features from Windows 7 into Vista, a testament to just how similar the architecture between the two operating systems is. A final version of this update will be available to Vista users later this year.

Below is a description of the items included; those most notable to our readers will probably be DirectX 11 support (just in time for the new update) and the Portable Devices Platform.

To acquire the update, grab the Vista script through the Microsoft Download Center linked below, then load up Windows Update to fetch the new content.

• Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library

The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS library contains the latest advancements in modern graphics technologies for gaming, multimedia, imaging and printing applications. It includes updates to DirectX to support hardware acceleration for 2D, 3D and text based scenarios; DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing scenarios; and XPS Library for document printing scenarios.

• Windows Automation API

The Windows Automation API allows accessibility tools and test automations to access Windows user interface in a consistent way across operating system versions.

• Windows Portable Devices Platform

The Windows Portable Devices (WPD) Platform supplies the infrastructure to standardize data transfers between an application and a portable device, such as a mobile phone, digital camera, or portable media player.

• Windows Ribbon and Animation Manager Library

The Windows Ribbon and Animation Manager Library includes contains the Windows Ribbon API, a command framework that enables developers to quickly and easily create rich ribbon experiences in their applications, and the Windows Animation Manager API, an animation framework for managing the scheduling and execution of user interface element animations.

Adds direct upload capability to Facebook, DivX and MJPEG AVI formats

If you shoot home videos sometimes your results are less than stellar and you find yourself wishing for a way to improves the quality. Motion DSP has such a product with its vReveal software that is designed to make it extremely easy to improve the quality of flawed videos. vReveal is an amazingly easy, one-click application for quickly fixing dark, shaky, noisy, pixilated, or blurry video clips. While vReveal can run on any GPU, it was especially written to take advantage of the power of CUDA-enabled Nvidia processors.

The latest release of the software, version 1.1, offers several new features:

• NVIDIA "G80" models now supported for GPU acceleration (GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 640, 8800 GTS 320; Quadro 4600 and 5600)
• Even more powerful video stabilization, plus auto-cropping of black bars from around stabilized videos
• New output formats including DivX and MJPEG AVI. (Joins the previous output options of WMV and uncompressed AVI)
• Japanese localization. (Full set is now English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese)
• Integrated Facebook video uploader -- the first of its kind in a desktop application

The software retails for $49.99 and you can try it out by downloading a 30-day free trial from the company's web site.

Killed a couple of careers cause you copyin' more, couple years behind bars just to even the score!

Like all public service announcements aimed at the youth back in the early 90's, the message against the evils of software piracy was delivered in corny rap through the "cult classic" educational video, "Don't Copy That Floppy" (Youtube link). Heck, even the sequel has the hip and cool youth of today laughing at the original. Oh yes, there's recently been a sequel courtesy of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), "Don't Copy That 2", and it's available for your listening pleasure at www.dontcopythat2.com, and even iTunes.

As in the original video, "Don't Copy That 2" extols the virtues of anti-piracy through the hip-hop stylings of the newly upgraded MC Double Def DP... the Digital Protector. Unfortunately he doesn't get to battle against a costumed villain voiced by Tim Curry in the digial world, like the Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad.

Yet if you software pirates continue your foul deeds with a guilty conscious or not, you'll end up like the mother in the music video: being chased by armed police while you're in the middle of making dinner in the kitchen or something. So put your knowledge to use for better things, like spotting the seconds-long Rage cameo courtesy of id Software. Else you can stick around for a guest appearance from convicted software pirate Jeremiah Mondello, currently serving a 48-month federal sentence for hawking pirated software on eBay using stolen bank accounts.  Heck it's even got Klingons in it, proving they did indeed triumph in a desperate struggle for our primitive planet.

According to the SIIA, a "modified and extended" version of the video will be made available for actual classrooms later this fall... so you young'uns better stay in school. Or else.

Microsoft offers folks a free ride

Microsoft has now made available a 90-day free trial version of Windows 7 (RTM), called the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial version. It is intended to be downloaded by IT professionals -- the good news is though, that just as long as you believe yourself to qualify as an IT professional, you can download it.

The Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial will be available until March 31st, 2010 -- or until they run out of an unspecified amount of license keys available. The 'Enterprise' version is pretty much the same, feature-wise, as the Ultimate retail version.

The trial Windows version comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, and five of the world's most popular languages.

On the Microsoft download page, it says that once this version of Windows expires, you will need to do a fresh re-install of the OS. However some of said that it is possible to change product keys -- so if you decided to purchase Windows 7, perhaps you might be able to change your key, thereby saving yourself the hassle of having to re-install an OS.

Web browser hosts new design, faster engine, auto-updates, Turbo functionality, and more

Opera Software today releases version 10 of its acclaimed browser, bringing plenty of new features in tow, and improving on old ones.

Some highlights of the new release include an auto-update ability, an improved rendering engine which boasts higher stability and security, and Opera Turbo, a very handy function for those on slow connections -- this one offers a variety of options to suit your needs.

Apart from that, lots of improvements have been made to old features like Opera Mail, bugs have been fixed, and a new design is yours to enjoy. The release notes are massive, so head here if you wish to get a deeper look, and to the source below to download.

Corp. donating meals to Feeding America for every download

Microsoft has been running a program with the Feeding America charity since early June, whereby users who download Internet Explorer 8 will see eight meals donated to starving Americans.

As the charity has designated September Hunger Action month, Microsoft has kicked things into even higher gear, offering to donate 16 meals per download for those who are still on Internet Explorer 6.

Not sure how they work it, but under the program, called "Browser for the Better", eight meals can be had for just $1.15; up to $1 million worth will be donated before it ends June 30, 2010.

Note you don't have to actually install the browser, you simply need to download it through the website below. Even for staunch Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Safari users, we encourage you to give it a whirl.

Transitional period means customers are suffering, company admits

It's not often a large company or corporation will openly admit its mistakes and apologize to customers when appropriate, so we have to give kudos to Adobe here. The software company recently upgraded its customer service experience, bringing in over 800 new agents in its transition to a new global provider (outsourcing possibly), and with it came a real nosedive in quality on that end.

Below is a copy of their open letter to customers, which also comes with an emergency e-mail should you be having any problems yourself during this period.

Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable to us and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused some of our customers.

We are working diligently – in fact, teams are working around the clock – to resolve these issues. I’d like to thank all our customers who are sharing feedback and giving us the opportunity to respond. We appreciate your loyalty, support, and willingness to make your concerns heard.

Adobe is in the process of transitioning to a new global service provider that will help grow and improve the quality of our customer service worldwide. While our new partner is a recognised leader in service and support solutions, this is a major global transition that includes bringing more than 800 new agents onboard. Clearly this process has not gone as smoothly as we had planned, and we are working to immediately remedy the situation. We are confident that once this transition is completed, we will provide customers with new and better ways to engage with Adobe using their preferred methods, helping to ensure prompt, effective customer service.

The Adobe Customer Care leadership team is monitoring our customers’ experiences closely to understand and respond to the challenges you are encountering. If you experience difficulties of any kind, contacting Customer Service in your local region remains the best initial course of action; however, during this transition period, unresolved issues can also be directed to adbecare@adobe.com.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition and work to improve our service and support operations for customers around the world.

Regards,
Lambert Walsh
Vice President, Technical Services

Photoshopped so bad, looks like it was done in Paint

If you have been paying attention to Twitter, a few other social sites, or even a thread in our own forums, you will notice that Microsoft has provoked some controversy.

On the United States version of the Microsoft Business website, there is a friendly picture of a white lady, an African-American man, and an Asian man.  Very diverse, very politically correct.  But on the Polish version of the site (picture before fix shown below), the African-American man’s head was replaced with a head of a white man.  Not only is that bad enough, but it was Photoshopped horribly, and the hand wasn’t even replaced.

Microsoft quickly stepped in, and replaced the race-swap picture.  A Microsoft representative said, “We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”

Here is a screenshot of the US site, followed by one of the Polish site:

Really, whoever did that needs to take a class on Photoshop.

Perhaps Linux or BSD?

What are you in favor of?  Windows, or something free such as Linux?  This Wednesday the Free Software Foundation (FSF) will be holding a demonstration in Boston, where they will try to convince businesses to throw out their copies of Windows, in exchange of free software.

The Free Software Foundation believes that businesses using Windows have put a risk on their “privacy, security, and freedom."

The demonstration seems to be more focused on the next version of Windows, 7, to be released October 22, 2009.  FSF Executive Director, Peter Brown, was quoted saying that they are not targeting 7 in general, but more so Microsoft: “Any time Microsoft tries to push them to a new version, it's a good time to make that case," he remarked.

This isn’t just about which operating system has market share, but it’s also about digital rights management.  The FSF wants to prevent these powers from becoming too common in the world.

"That's the kind of power that proprietary software gives to these corporations," said Brown. "When we give that power, sooner or later somebody comes knocking, whether it is the government or the corporations themselves. Free software is kind of the answer to that."

So, if you’re interested, check out the Free Software Foundation’s website. Who knows, maybe you will become a Linux fanatic soon.

Corporation heavily fined for copyright infringement

They say that everything's bigger in Texas.  Unfortunately, Microsoft's check book and software repertoire are shrinking.  Texas federal court justice Leonard Davis ruled yesterday in favor of Toronto based i4i, a software firm that had patented technology relating to custom XML formatting back in 1998, which the company claimed Microsoft's Office 2003 and Office 2007 suites infringed.

As such, Microsoft has sixty days to take their precious Word software off the market.  In addition, they owe:

• $200 Million in unpaid royalties, which was awarded to i4i back in May.
• $40 Million for willful infringement.  A trail of e-mails submitted as evidence during the case's preceedings indicated that Microsoft knew they were infringing the aforementioned patent and yet did it anyway thinking nobody would catch on.
• $37 Million in prejudgement interest.
• A total of $165,102 per day until a final ruling has been made in the case concerning damages.

This is definitely a huge blow to the software giant's reputation.  Reports coming from Redmond indicate that an appeal is being considered.

No final date has been announced as of yet for the final judgment of damages.

Leads to a blue screen of untimely life cessation

A fairly large bug has been found in Windows 7 RTM (basically the 'complete' version of Windows 7 that gets shipped off to manufacturers to be sold.) 

The bug is a memory leak that is triggered when people use Microsoft's ole classic: the CHKDSK command, on a hard drive that doesn't have your boot partition on it. The bug will only be triggered if you use the "/r" command, which is the "read and verify all data" paramater.  

If you trigger the bug, you can expect your computer to grind to a screeching halt fairly quickly. If it doesn't immediately crash stuff, the bug will at least cause a huge system slow down in stage 4 of the CHKDSK operation. The bug effects both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Some blogs are calling this a big "show stopper" but it doesn't seem like it'll be much of a big deal, nor a problem that Microsoft should have much trouble fixing up on a patch available on the first day of the new operating system's retail debut.

Try it out now with Windows 7 RC/RTM

Microsoft would like you to know Windows XP Mode, the OS virtualization feature built into Windows 7 Ultimate, is now available to test drive on the RC or RTM versions of the new operating system. For those that've been thinking about grabbing the Ultimate version (which is bundled with it) versus Home Premium or Professional (the former can't use it, the latter can download and install it), this should help you make up your mind. Note an additional 1GB of RAM, 15 GB of hard drive space, and a hardware virtualization-capable CPU are needed here.

Microsoft reminds the feature won't be necessary for most of us, it simply provides “last mile” compatibility technology for special cases regarding applications, particularly for business users.

Since the beta version, they've made several important changes based on feedback. Here's what you get:

• You can now attach USB devices to Windows XP Mode applications directly from the Windows 7 task-bar. This means your USB devices, such as printers and flash drives, are available to applications running in Windows XP Mode, without the need to go into full screen mode.
• You can now access Windows XP Mode applications with a “jump-list”. Right click on the Windows XP Mode applications from the Windows 7 task bar to select and open most recently used files.
• You now have the flexibility of customizing where Windows XP Mode differencing disk files are stored.
• You can now disable drive sharing between Windows XP Mode and Windows 7 if you do not need that feature.
• The initial setup now includes a new user tutorial about how to use Windows XP Mode.

 The XP Mode release candidate can be downloaded here.

Strategic bluff, or actual fact ?

Earlier this week, some terrible cracker folks found a way to bypass the product key activation for Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7 Ultimate. Using a stolen master authentication key given to manufacturers, a key-breaking tool immediately ran laps around the Internet, enabling pirate folks to register versions of Windows 7, probably usually the latest RTM ISO.

Microsoft is understandably not amused. Today they addressed the situation on their blog. They claim that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the new Genuine Advantage methods employed in the latest OS.

The blog entry starts by admitting that the leaked master key is the real deal: "Yesterday we were alerted to reports of a leak of a special product key issued to an OEM partner of ours. The key is for use with Windows 7 Ultimate RTM product that is meant to be pre-installed by the OEM on new PCs to be shipped later this year." But the blog then goes to say that there are ways for them to know which copies are authentic, and that no manufacturers would be selling copies of Windows 7 using that key.

"The Windows Activation Technologies included in Windows 7 are designed to handle situations such as this one, and customers using these tools and methods should expect Windows to detect them. Windows 7 already includes an improved ability to detect hacks, also known as activation exploits, and alert customers who are using a pirated copy," they said.

It does seem like Microsoft took a big blow by having the master key stolen -- even months before the official release of the OS. Although it doesn't seem likely that they can presently distinguish between users with legit keys, and users without, one would guess that they will introduce a WGA patch in the updates that will unvalidate keys derived from this master key.

One blog commentator derided Microsoft for not doing much to change their activation methods from the Vista days. According to that anonymous poster: "After this long a time, you guys didn't even make any change in Windows 7. What a joke. You guys still call it reliable? OMG, Com'n, boys. Replacing a master key for a specific vendor could really solve the problem? ... Change the mechanism, instead of just replacing keys. What do you say?"

The blog writer responded: "I would also like to remind readers that our program is effective at this [anti-piracy] goal and we aim to keep it effective."

Looks awful Chrome-y

Fresh off its major 3.5 release for Firefox, Mozilla begun the design phase for version 4.0, as well as 3.7. Both look pretty similar, under Windows 7 at least, so we'll just take a look at the latter here today, for which the corporation has released some drafts. Keep in mind these are for "brainstorming and exploration" only; the final look could be wildly different.

First is presented a couple of ideas for tab placement -- above or below the address bar?

For 'below', a Bookmarks widget (pictured here) is considered as a replacement for the current menu/toolbar implementation, with an option to restore it.

'Above' brings its own complexities:

Positives

• Save Vertical Space
• Efficiency/Remove Visual Complexity - Right now the tabs have to be connected to something. So we are adding an extra visual element for them to connect to.
• Shorter Mouse Distance to Page Controls

Negatives

• Breaks Consistency/Familiarity - Moving things confuses existing users.
• Title is MIA - With the space removed from the titlebar you only get the truncated version in the tab.
• Longer Mouse Distance to Tabs - Takes longer to mouse to a tab.
• Lost Space - Sandwiched in between the application icon and the window widgets you lose some space.

The Location Bar is getting its own reexamination; the team proposes a combining of the stop, go and refresh buttons, with more colour and customization likely added later, to these and the progress bar.

All this wouldn't be of much use without some feedback of course, so head over to the MozillaWiki's discussion page to let 'em know how you feel about the new Foxy.

People are just a little excited

Yesterday Microsoft hit the 'release to manufacturing' (RTM) milestone for Windows 7 (build 7600), the last stop before public release (developers and the like have it now).

Windows Server 2008 R2 has also hit its final build -- good news all around, really.

Not one to take the matter lightly, Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky and CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement at the corporation's annual sales kick-off event in Atlanta, and we thought we'd give you a little look.

Let's just say people were excited.

Pirate Bay to gain subscription fees

World-famous torrent site The Pirate Bay shocked everyone a few weeks ago when they announced that they sold themselves to Global Gaming Factory for $7.8 million dollars. Pirate Bay was seen as the bastion of fight against copyrights and free media, and no one saw the sale coming, even after they lost a controversial court battle in Sweden. 

Global Gaming Factory hired a guy named Wayne Russo to be in charge of changing the Pirate Bay into something that would both keep the userbase of The Pirate Bay, and the likes of the RIAA, MPAA and other groups all happy at the same time. Mr. Russo has had the previous learning experience of the P2P world with Grokster and Mashboxx -- of which both have not been terribly successful.

Talking to CNET, the first word of the plan for The Pirate Bay has now been unveiled. In short, the plans entail turning The Pirate Bay into a subscription service.

There are some interesting changes to the standard (and generally failed) subscription model, however. In effect, Wayne Russo hopes to turn the Pirate Bay into a sort of cloud computing service. For every gigabyte of hard drive space, the monthly fee will be lowered. Although not mentioned specifically in the interview, it seems likely that users will be able to also 'sell' processor time from their computers, for download credits as well."The more of your computer resources you contribute to the network, the less [of a monthly fee] you pay down to zero," Rosso was quoted as saying. "The user is in control."

The combined resources of all the Pirate Bay users when then be sold by the Global Gaming Factory to organizations that need tremendous computing power. This money would in turn be given to various copyright managing organizations. In turn, some funds would then go to the artists who made the entire thing possible.

This inventive P2P model seems to have more of a chance for success than prior, straight subscription fee P2P services. But the biggest challenge rests on the userbase of the Pirate Bay itself. When it comes to torrent sites, brand loyality isn't much of a factor. Will the users quickly jump ship to some other illegal torrent site, of which there are many? Or will a significant portion of existing pirates give this intriguing model a chance? Just the backlash against the sale alone might be enough to sink the boat before it has a chance to set sail.

Security and performance improvements noted

As assured shortly after the major 3.5 Firefox release, Mozilla has just now pushed out a 3.5.1 update which fixes multiple security and stability issues, and improves startup performance for users who were previously having issues. As a bonus, it appears to have fixed our issues with Java-enabled pages hanging.

Not much else to say -- grab it by clicking the 'Help' tab within the browser and clicking 'Check for Updates' as usual.

Town hall meeting proves amusing

Last week Secetary of State Hillary Clinton's town hall meeting had a particularly light air about it, with much laughter and applause throughout. Though much of the meeting focused on broad and imperative topics (well worth the read), one portion concerned the State Department's lack of options in web browsing for daily work, and was particularly amusing:

MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle:
Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)
UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can --
QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.)

They go on to note "nothing is free," to more laughter, citing resource management and such. The Secretary of State then goes on to utilize clothes and peanut butter in an analogy for efficient spending:

"[This reminds] me of what I occasionally sometimes do, which I call shopping in my closet, which means opening doors and seeing what I actually already have, which I really suggest to everybody, because it’s quite enlightening. (Laughter.) And so when you go to the store and you buy, let’s say, peanut butter and you don’t realize you’ve got two jars already at the back of the shelf – I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn’t be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?

Yeah."

And this is why we love Clinton.

Online gaming services continue to butt heads, and Sony thinks they'll get the upper hand

Sony Computer Entertainment continues to expect great things from the PlayStation Network, relying on their gaming network services to help the division return to profitablity. The PSN launched after Xbox Live, but PSN Operations director Eric Lempel believes their service is finally pulling ahead of Microsoft's popular online platform:

"I don't think there's a lot of 'catch up' [with XBL] anymore. In some cases, I think we've got more, and we've got some other things they don't have. In terms of strengths, of course we're still free, and we're giving you a lot for free. It's not just free online gaming, but we've got PlayStation Home, which is a massive community and application that's totally free to use.

"From my perspective, we have our own strategy and we've always been building our roadmap and saying here's what comes next; I think you've seen PSN has evolved tremendously since we've launched."

That said, Sony does not yet have plans to introduce HD streaming video for the PSN. Lempel cites quality concerns, selection of newer releases, as well as the need to keep things free on PSN as main reasons for their hesitation to embrace up to 1080p streaming video.

Sony will continue to bank on gaming for the PSN's success, and in this regard Lempel is pleased with the headway the company has made since the service launched. Around 45 percent of the catalogue of digital download titles are exclusive to PSN, and Lempel believes this is a result of developers leveraging the HD capabilities of the PS3. Lempel concedes that Sony won't be able to offer back-catalogue PS3 games for download through PSN, due to the sheer size of some of the titles which (in Sony's view) necessitated the Blu-ray media format.

The PSN graces the PlayStation Portable platform as well, and here Lempel exols the virtues of reducing the price of the PSP development tools. With regards to the new PSP Go which exclusively supports digital download titles, the goal is to make select PSP titles available online for download over the PSN day and date with their UMD retail releases.

When pressed with comparisons to Apple's iPhone and its increasing popularity with gamers thanks to the App Store, Lempel believes iPhone users tend to be more forgiving with the free (and almost free) titles available for the platform. SCE doesn't see the iPhone as a serious "gaming-centric device", and they expect the device's users to feel the same way. Shorter, quirkier games are not discouraged for the PSN, but Sony is hoping to they won't take away from the console gaming focus of the PSP platforms.

While we can't expect the PSN store to look much like the Apple App Store's game catalogue anytime soon, the PSP Go was designed to better accomodate the "casual" gaming demographic through PSN downloads. It will be interesting to see how the PSN-exclusive software lineup evolves.