Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV: the biggest and the best


The most eagerly awaited game of the year is finally here. Nick Cowen goes for a stroll through Liberty City



This is a video game that offers such a degree of depth, it dwarfs the effort of all of its peers and predecessors.


The animation is superb: gone are the lobster hands and expressionless faces of the past – every single individual has fingers and skin tone.


The city itself is gorgeously rendered - with realistic light and textures, reflections in windows and windscreens – complete with its own weather system, and multi-cultural population.


You play Niko Bellic, a new arrival from an unnamed Eastern European “old country” with the American dream firmly in mind. It's never quite specified which country it is Niko hails from – except that it's not Russia.


Niko talks of a war and witnessing atrocities, but these only serve to highlight how different America is compared to where he's from.


This being the fourth (or eighth depending on how you look at it) instalment in the GTA series, the designers are evidently confident they can hold your attention as they develop the story.





Even the New York Times lavished praise of a sort on the video game from Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar studio: “‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.”


Though the vast majority of gamer blogs were even more emphatic in their love of the game, there were bound to be many naysayers if only because “GTA” deals with such edgy content, in this case an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and beats up prostitutes. The Parents Television Council thinks retailers shouldn’t carry the game according to Variety magazine.





The “Grand Theft Auto” series of open-world action games drill deeper into mainstream culture with each installment. The violent, stylized portrayal of thug life has earned “GTA” poster child status among political watchdogs for all that’s evil in video games.
 
It will be a great shame if the inevitable hubbub overshadows the epic, revolutionary nature of “GTA IV.” The developers, Rockstar Games, have crafted a wildly ambitious game world complete with an engrossing story of an immigrant's rise to power, unforgettable characters and expertly honed gameplay. It will be weeks, if not months, before I get my fill of “GTA IV.”











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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Windows Vista SP1 Now An Automatic Download


Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Thursday released the first major update for its Windows Vista operating system to its automated download service, meaning that Vista users could receive the update by default as early as today if they have the service turned on.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1, as the update is called, has been released in English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese versions, according to Microsoft.


There is a caveat, however.


Microsoft is dribbling out Vista SP1 to home users in small batches -- so it may not be available as an automatic update for some for several weeks. "We'll be distributing the service pack slowly so that we can help Windows users have a good experience," said Chris Flores, Microsoft's official Vista blogger, in a Thursday post.





SP1 is a rollout of software updates that fix bugs and glitches in Vista and is seen as a milestone that will inspire many customers -- especially those in the business market -- to adopt the OS. In fact, in a recent report, "Building the Business Case for Windows Vista," Forrester Research said more business customers plan to upgrade to Vista now that SP1 is available. This comes as no surprise, considering companies often wait for the first service pack after a major Windows release to update corporate desktops.


However, even SP1 will not guarantee that enterprises and business customers currently running XP or an earlier version of Windows will upgrade, as some have said they would skip the OS altogether. The same Forrester report said as much, although the research firm is recommending that companies don't skip Vista because they would not be well-positioned for future versions of Windows if they do.


Microsoft has acknowledged problems with application compatibility and lack of driver support, among others, that customers have had with Vista. It says SP1 and other updates that the company continues to make should remedy these problems. What the company hasn't said is why there were so many problems with the OS when the company had more than five years between the releases of Windows XP and Vista to ensure a smooth transition.




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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Liang sends Doherty crashing out

The Snooker World Championships is more interesting then ever. After the great battle yesterday between the Asian players Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, it was a real fast game.



Ken Doherty became the third former Crucible winner to exit the World Championships at the first hurdle after losing 10-5 to China's Liang Wenbo.


The damage was mainly done in the first session when Liang, 21, knocked in six half centuries to take a 7-2 lead.


Doherty lost the first frame of the evening session, but took the next two of the next three to keep his faint hopes alive at 9-4 behind.


A nervy final frame saw both players miss chances before Liang sealed it.


Doherty follows world champions Steve Davis and Graeme Dott by losing in the opening round in Sheffield.




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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Sony and Microsoft battle it out for GTA IV sales


Stock scarce as pre-orders reach record-breaking levels

Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto IV has reached an all-time high as Sony and Microsoft battle it out to become the console of choice for GTA fans.


Certain retailers have been offering free Xbox Live points and Xbox Live membership in promotion of the 360 version of the game, whereas Sony is set to announce a special GTA IV PS3 bundle. However, retail opinion is divided over which format will emerge victorious.





Reports are coming in thick and fast that an Xbox 360 bundle has appeared on several online retailers down under. Consisting of an Xbox 360 arcade console, Halo 3, GTA IV all for AU $499.95.


Sounds good, but why would Microsoft try and market this bundle when Microsoft own the exclusivity rights to downloadable content on the system, but the Xbox 360 arcade version is the basic pack WITHOUT a hard drive subsequently unable to support the highly anticipated DLC?







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Friday, April 18, 2008

Ricky Gervais to cameo in GTA IV for Sony PS3 and Xbox 360


One of the most anticipated games of the year has to be GTA IV, and will be a huge hit once it is released. The game has been written about to death now and we all assume we know all there is to know about the game however; there is one little gem that we did not know and that is Ricky Gervais is to make a cameo in the game.

The comedian will play himself in the game as he is a stand up act performing in the comedy club in Liberty City. Going into this comedy club might just be a welcome break while you hang out and have a rest, and you will also be able to watch Gervais as he performs some new material that he has written especially for Grand Theft Auto 4.





"It's a first - which always interests me," he said. "It was shot in New York, my favourite place in the world, and I got to wear a tight lycra suit as part of the digital process. No, hold on, that wasn't so good," he says.


"Unfortunately they captured the whole horror, except I look slightly tougher. It is seriously a big deal, though. Games have outsold Hollywood for the past few years so it's nice to be a small part of that."





Ricky isn't the only superstar to appear in the new Liberty City epic. Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld also makes his video game debut but you can put down those twitching baseball bats. Unfortunately, Karl will only be there in voice as DJ Karl on K109, the disco station.






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Friday, April 11, 2008

Fallout 3 Updated Impressions - Character Creation, Combat, and Canine Companions - PC News at GameSpot


More than 10 years ago, serious computer role-playing game fans fell in love with a postapocalyptic role-playing game called Fallout, a game that offered deep role playing, dark humor, and a memorable adventure that was worth replaying. More than 10 years later, an entirely different studio is now working on the next game in the series, trying to stay true to the original vision of the first Fallout game from 1997 while also including all the improvements and open-ended exploration of its last game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yes, Bethesda Softworks is working on Fallout 3. Yes, your adventure will take place in the postapocalyptic wasteland (in this case, the ruins of Washington DC); yes, you'll still start your adventure as a dweller in a vault (a colony living in a radiation shelter left over from the nuclear war); and yes, we had an opportunity to take an updated look at the game.



The game is currently still in an alpha state of development--content is still being added and taken away. According to a Bethesda representative, the primary game is shaping up to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 hours of gameplay, though it will offer dozens of hours of other stuff to do for players who enjoy exploring side quests and other types of content. For instance, you'll find multiple outcomes available to different quests as you side with different factions, and you may also receive random quests as you pick up communiques on your PipBoy, such as distress calls or new missions to perform.


In any case, the developer is focusing on having a clean interface that isn't cluttered with an overwhelming amount of information--various menus, such as your inventory and your character's current health levels (you can sustain crippling injuries to various parts of your body that may affect your weapon skills or your ability to run), will be kept separate, rather than kept on one crowded screen. While the game will still handle dialogue with other characters with a multiple-choice dialogue screen of the kind you've seen in such games as Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic, you'll receive most of your alerts, such as new quests, as brief text messages that fade away, similar to friends notifications on Xbox Live. The idea is to avoid having too many jarring messages that have to be individually clicked on and closed down to get back to the action.







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Gartner Explains Why Windows Is Broken


Microsoft's operating system (OS) development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many apps and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office... well, it's just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft.



Mature markets have limited growth in terms of PC hardware. The computer hardware business is expected to grow only 2 percent to 8 percent between 2005 and 2011. The opportunities for PCs are higher in emerging markets, where the growth rate is 16-24 percent for PC hardware-but they're more price-sensitive so vendors and enterprises have to keep the price down. That means less memory and storage, for example-and Vista is not appropriate for that sort of memory model. Linux is the preferred OS on low end PCs including "one laptop per child" and certainly Microsoft doesn't want to see that happen. "All these things are in opposition to what we've seen with people expanding PC use year after year," MacDonald said.


Version compatibility is relevant in more than software development terms. For example, they said, iPhone's version of OS X is closer to the desktop version of the Mac OS than Windows Mobile is to Vista.


Servers are evolving in multiple and sometimes conflicting directions. Some industry trends imply that we need to scale up computing, such as single instance data stores and partitioning. Others are driving it down, such as grid and cloud computing, server farms and cluster computing. The result, they believe, is that enterprises will want we want to customize the OS based on the need.





Although Microsoft has said it will not go as long before its next release of Windows as it did between XP and Vista, even the possible sped-up timetable hardly shows a product that can quickly adapt to change.


Meanwhile, while Apple was able to build the iPhone on OS X, Microsoft has had to extend another lifeline to Windows XP because its latest product can't even fit onto the cheap mini-laptops from HP, Asus, and others.


"Windows as we know it must be replaced," Gartner said in its presentation, again according to ComputerWorld. Meanwhile, the company faces other threats, such as a diminished role for the operating system in a world of hypervisors.




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Google App Engine: Cashing in on the user data


Google's announcement of its App Engine has naturally generated a lot of buzz, as well as some fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There is the concern that Google will corral even more user data via its App Engine, becoming a kind of 21st century data and advertising baron, as Microsoft has been the operating system and productivity software baron in the last three decades.

If you extrapolate from Google's growing share of search and advertising, and include a growing share of Web applications through its APIs and the fledgling App Engine, you could imagine a Google that becomes the dominant Internet operating system and infrastructure provider. It's still the early days of cloud computing, but the ground is shifting.


"It's funny that we waged the war to free ourselves of (the) shackles of Microsoft and Hailstorm (a failed attempt to manage personal data)," said David Young, CEO of cloud infrastructure provider and App Engine competitor Joyent. "Now, for some reason, the digerati are anxious to run into exact same thing with Google. It's not evil, but they are tracking users and clickstreams, which (are) the real currency of the Web, and most people don't care. If you can get all data, you can target ads and the user experience, such as showing a site in a different color, depending on user profile."





Google noted that after hearing "some complaints from the developer community about it," it opted to remove the application from the Web.


Google launched the preview release of the App Engine on Monday, touting it as a way for developers to run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure. The development environment includes dynamic Web serving, persistent storage, automatic scaling and load-balancing Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail, according to Google





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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Google Previews App Engine Platform for Web Applications


Google last night launched a preview of its App Engine web application hosting service.App Engine provides a back-end platform, including a distributed Web server, database and storage, to run apps written with Google's SDK. As Google's App Engine Blog puts it, the service "gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications."

The preview period granted 10,000 developers a free account with 500mb of storage and enough processing power and bandwidth for about 5 million page views per month, according to Google. Not surprisingly, those accounts appear to have all been snapped up. But developers can still download the SDK and work on a non-hosted application.


For now, applications have to be written in the Python language. When it fully launches, Google says it will still offer free accounts with the same limitations as now, and that larger, more popular apps can purchase more resources. Applications can authenticate users with a Google account log-in.







"I believe that App Engine will make launching a startup easier than ever," said Matt Cutts, head of Google's Web spam team, in a blog post. "At this point, you could build up a pretty killer startup incorporating technologies as simple as Gmail or as powerful as App Engine."





At some point, when Google App Engine has been more thoroughly tested, usage beyond these limits will require a fee.


Amazon Web Services can be used separately, whereas Google App Engine is more of an integrated platform. 


Other more or less comparable Web app platforms include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Bungee Labs' BungeeConnect, and Xcerion's icloud.





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Microsoft says publishes more software information


Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it has posted online more than 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation for underlying software code in its software programs.

The underlying code, or protocols, are built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.


In February, the world's biggest software maker, faced with regulatory concerns in Europe and customers struggling with complex computer systems, said it would publish information so rival programs can work better with Windows, Office and other major products.





Tuesday, the company said it posted preliminary versions of technical documentation for protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Developers don't need to pay a fee or take a license to use the information.


"We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions," said Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft.






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Microsoft hits multiple Internet home runs

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Monday, April 07, 2008

Yahoo Rejects Microsoft Bid Again


Yahoo on Monday reiterated its rejection of a takeover offer from Microsoft, again calling it too low.

The company was responding to a letter from Microsoft that threatened to lower the price of its buyout offer and take it directly to Yahoo shareholders.


Although Microsoft’s offer was initially valued at $31 a share, a drop in the price of Microsoft shares has reduced the offer to just more than $29 a share.


Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, raised the pressure on Yahoo’s directors on Saturday in a letter warning that Microsoft would begin a proxy fight seeking to oust them if the two companies did not reach a negotiated deal in the next three weeks.





Yahoo! said Ballmer's letter "mischaracterizes the nature of our discussions with you".


Ballmer said Yahoo! had chosen "not to enter into substantive negotiations with us [Yahoo]".


On the contrary Yahoo's Yang said: "We have had constructive conversations together regarding a variety of topics, including integration and regulatory issues... Moreover, Steve, you personally attended two of these meetings and could have advanced discussions in any way you saw fit."


Yahoo!'s letter also said that Microsoft had failed to respond to questions sent 28 March relating to possible anti-trust and other regulatory matters.




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Microsoft Offers $44.6 Billion To Acquire Yahoo at $31 Share

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Tech File: The downside of MP3s and digital tunes


Apple last week confirmed that iTunes had outpaced Wal-Mart in January and February as the nation's No. 1 seller of music. The Apple announcement followed an earlier report by NPD Group that compared iTunes music sales with those of major retailers.

Pardon the pun but it's not exactly an "Apples to Apples" comparison because stores typically sell albums while iTunes allows users to download one track at a time. To more or less even the score, 12 tracks were considered the same as a single album. It was only a month earlier that Apple passed Best Buy to become the No. 2 music retailer.


What's interesting about iTunes' meteoric rise in popularity is that it is doing very well despite some downsides to the format and the portable devices people typically use to listen to the music. For one thing, most songs purchased on iTunes are saddled with so-called digital rights management that limits what you can do with them, including what devices you can play them on. The CDs that Wal-Mart and other retailers sell don't have DRM, so they can be ripped as MP3s and played on any digital music player.





According to the LA Times, NPD Group analyst Russ Crupnick predicted that Apple's music industry power would only continue. "If you look at what is happening to the CD and the growth of the digital side, it's a pattern that is going to hold," he said.


The announcement validates an earlier report from Arstechnica which reckoned Apple had earned a 19 per cent share of all US-based retail music sales in January, just good enough to push it past industry leader Wal-Mart, which secured a 15 per cent share for the same period.


An NDP survey that had been released in February had shown that Itunes had muscled its way to the No. 2 spot in 2007, outdoing Best Buy.






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