Broadcasting corp looks to increase web presence

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CBS is purchasing internet company CNet for $1.8 billion, or $11.50 per share, the corporation said today. CNet owns many popular internet sites, including Download.com, as well as several gaming resources (Gamespot, GameFAQs, Metacritic), and technology resources (TechRepublic, CNet.com).

CBS' motivation for the deal is probably obvious: to increase its online prescence. The corporation plans to integrate its broadcast networks with CNet's resources. In a conference call with reporters, CBS' CEO Leslie Moonves said this opportunity with such a large audience was a "large part" of the reason for the acquisition:

"Our idea is to have our content wherever, whenever you can get it, and adding CNet just makes that happen faster."

For CBS, this also looks like an opportunity to shift their programming to the online medium somewhat, as its chief of interactive business Quincy Smith has been pursuing this avenue for some time now, in light of the change in demand.

CBS feels the price is fair too, stating "We feel like we got a terrific value with this company."

Looks like good news for CNet as well, as the company was in the middle of some rough legal battles with one of its largest shareholders.

This is just one of a few major deals the corporation has inked this year, two others included partnerships with Eqal (responsible for "lonelygirl15" and "KateModern") for programming in multiple formats, and with AOL Time Warner, providing content from 140 of their radio stations to its music service.

CBS is owned in turn by Summer Redstone and National Amusements, the latter of which operates over 1500 movie theaters worldwide, Viacom (MTV Networks, BET, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks), and Midway Games.

Sort of like virtual spray painting and tagging

The other day, while well surfing the World Wide Web, I happened across a stimulating website called Paint That **** Gold.

The basic premise of the website is this: you write a url in this little box, then it takes a screen capture of the website, and then it gives you some tools to get to work. You can spray the URL image with paint, color it with markers, use stencils and stuff like that -- anything to help you get that pent up hostile artistic aggresion out. The website is fairly fun, in a let's-waste-time-on-the-Internet kind of way.

True to the site's witty name, the only colors you have at your disposal are black and gold. However, I did not let this stop me when I created this visual masterpiece, playing on an age-old, classic graffiti-inspired statement. I call this work of art "Barf":

I don't think it is possible to do anything better than that work of art, but be my guest -- your welcome to try.

The website was made to promote a hip-hoppery group named Atmosphere. From the site, you can listen to their music, check out the tour dates, write them hate mail, and do similar stuff like that.

The man sticks it to the man

Microsoft: We'll give ya USD 33 per share (47.5 billion).

Yahoo!: Nawww.

Microsoft: To heck with this, then.

After trying to acquire Internet company Yahoo! before (at 31 per share), Microsoft has thrown in the towel after their recent second offer. Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang feels his company is worth USD 38 per share, not the 33 offered by Microsoft.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer feels it's now best for his company to recede, stating the following in a letter to Yang following the rejection:

"We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal."

Following the first proposal, Microsoft threatened a proxy fight while Yahoo! seeked interest from other companies to prevent a possible takeover. Seems these are just two companies that can't get along; MicroHoo just wasn't meant to be.

This week, Yahoo's stock closed at 28.67 per share. Ouch.

In today's irreverent, musical news...

You probably have all seen some wacky renditions of people from the Internet playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song with odd instruments, such as wooden spoons. But...have you ever seen anybody play that legendary musical tune... with a remote controlled car?

Well that's just what some wacky Chinese guys did, in an underground parking garage:

Usually this would not be news worthy, but I have a weakness for the Super Mario Bros. theme played using remote controlled vehicles.

Apparently the record is only 24 hours

After reviewing official footage, Guinness World Records announced today that three Frag Dolls have gotten into the book of World Records.  The Frag Dolls will take the record for 'Longest continuous play of a single FPS.' The game played was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and the Frag Dolls extraordinare were Kitt, Sarin, and Jam.

If you are scratching your head at this point, the Frag Dolls are a team of gamer girls based in the France, the US and the UK, that are sponsored by Ubisoft.  They compete in gaming competitions and endeavor to raise the profile of girls and women in gaming. They also tend to have agreeable appearances as well.

The UK Frag Dolls capped terrorists for 24 hours not only for Guinness Glory, but to raise money for breast cancer research. They played on Xbox Live, and solicited donations from the public for their worthy cause. Frag Doll Kitt (pictured above) had this to say: "I can't believe I'm a world record breaker! I'm brimming with pride that we've achieved this. I'd like to thank everyone who supported us, playing with us on Live and donating to Breakthrough Breast Cancer."

So, for you hardcore gamers out there, 24 hours seems to be the record to beat now. I think I've must have gone at least 14 hours without even trying so I'm sure some of you out there can set your sights on this record to break.

The world needs more spam -- and thankfully, help is on the way

Human society needs billions and billions of spam messages about the following things: weight loss pills, cheap loans, and penis enlargement pills. If everyone did not receive billions of mailings on these vital three things, the world as we know it would collapse.

Fortunately, some programmers out there have sacrificed their time and labor for the benefit of mankind. Not looking to make a cheap buck off of the intelligent people who order the aforementioned products from the fortuitously found mystery mailings, these botnet makers strive to reach the pinnacle in advertising technology.

SecureWorks, a information security company, recently released a report on the state of the big botnets today.

Here are the top three fantastic new botnets that are convincing computers around the world to join their fabulous marketing campaigns:

1) SriZbi

    Aliases: Cbeplay, Exchanger

    Spam-sending capacity: 60 billion spams a day

    SriZbi is a very stealthy botnet that has a really nifty SMTP engine, which makes it a fantastic botnet. Parts of this botnet are sold to people who just love to sell stuff to other people, out of the kindness of their hearts. To make a good thing even better, the head of the owner of this botnet, a guy named "smp" (not sure why he uses an alias) hired some pillar-of-society contract programmer in the Ukraine to tweak SriZbi.

2) Bobax

   Aliases: Bobic, Kraken, Cotmonger

   Spam-sending capacity: 9 billion spams a day

   People thought Bobax was dead and gone, but SecureWorks believe that it has updated to become the current hero of the Internet, the Kraken botnet. Kraken has shown perseverance and commitment in sending spam to every willing and eager Internet user, but has decided to mix stuff up recently by switching from mortgage spam to low-interest loan spam. This is incredibly helpful because of the US housing market collapse, so not as many mortgages are needed, but low-interest loans with amazing low lending charges are in timely demand.

3) Rustock

   Aliases: RKRustok, Costrat

   Spam-sending capacity: 30 billion spams a day

   Rustock doesn't like to horde all the limelight, and is content being in the third position on this list, with a modest 125,000 computers participating in its willingly advertising control partnership. Rostock has doesn't like to be identified with one particular product, so it tends to choose things that keep things interesting: like under-valued stocks for instance. Lately, Rustock has been exercising its humanitarian interests, by helping get the public in touch with low-cost, effective medications, such as a Viagra and painkillers. Way to go Rustock! Keep up the good work.

Neoseeker congratulates these botnets for all the wonderful spam messages that they have sent out, and for all the hard work and dedication their owners have shown, in connecting the public with the fine goods and services offered.

Wii gets access to BBC iPlayer for streaming video of television shows from the past week

The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) is making its BBC iPlayer service compatible with the Nintendo Wii, allowing the console access programming from several BBC television channels and radio stations made available for viewing online.  In other words, the Wii will soon boast a video streaming service, at least in the United Kingdom.

There are no fees requires to view BBC programming from the prior seven days on the Wii through the iPlayer website.  While PC users can choose to download television programs from the BBCi Player for later viewing ("loan" periods are usually 30 days), we don't expect to Wii to benefit from video downloads thanks to its glaring lack of appreciable hard drive storage (or video playback functionality for that matter...).

Access to the BBC iPlayer website requires the Internet Channel to be installed on the Wii, naturally.  However, the BBC expresses interest in being able to make iPlayer available without needing the Internet Channel in the future; perhaps they intend to work with Nintendo to develop an iPlayer installer for the console, like the one for PC users.  The iPlayer for the Wii is pegged as "beta" for the time being, while the BBC finalizes appropriate encoding rates and video resolutions.

Advertising company strikes another deal

Similarly to Call of Heroes, social networking site Habbo will see a partnership with advertising provider Double Fusion. The deal with cover the virtual communities in North America, and will see the company handling "all activity related to advertising sales, sponsorship and promotional opportunities."

To those not in the know, Habbo is basically just a virtual world where users can log on and talk to each other. Think of it as something like Facebook meets The Sims meets Earthbound.

Double Fusion’s president and CEO Jonathan Epstein feels his company and Habbo are a great fit:

"As a company I feel we’ve developed technology and sales expertise that’s focused on delivering advertisers unique, engaging advertising experiences in games, and of course games are virtual worlds with a plot. We’ve done some work with virtual worlds in the past, and virtual worlds are a natural extension of the gaming experience – where users are creating their own plots. And among the virtual worlds Habbo has been doing it longer than anyone. They’ve been at it for 8 years, have a huge audience, and have tremendous experience in building successful ad campaigns already."

Honestly, since people are already spending real money on virtual items in the game, if there was ever a place for in-game (or in-social network if you prefer) advertising, I suppose this is the place.

Sulake's (the company that runs Habbo) Teemu Huuhtanen, their executive vice president of Marketing, Ad Sales and Business Development declared the end of his company's morals (okay, just kidding):

"We work with over 200 advertisers across the world, and the advertisers aren’t usually thinking about ‘impressions’; that’s kind of an old school way to think about things. They’re more interested in if the users are getting engaged with the items, using them and showing them off to each other."

Softpedia observes that "apparently, more and more companies that are involved in game development and game maintenance are looking at in-game as a clear and simple way of boosting revenue in a way that does not affect the end user." If they don't affect the end user, why is so much money and effort being put into these things?

A challenger to Steam, Direct2Drive to arrive later this month

A new challenger appears in the already-contested field of digital distribution for PC games.  Publisher Stardock enters the fray with an online content delivery platform in the vein of Valve Software's Steam, currently christened "Impulse".  Stardock itself is no stranger to digital distribution, running TotalGaming.net for downloadable games.

Impulse intends to be an extension of TotalGaming.net, and like Steam will feature downloadable games which require activation online, depending on the game itself.  According to Stardock founder Brad Wardell, Impulse will also come to support Xbox Live-inspired community features like profiles, blogs, clans, etc.  Games published on Impulse will benefit from updates which users can subscribe to online; these updates can be free, or developers/publishers could charge a monthly suscription fee depending on the content up for grabs.

Interestingly, Impulse will feature an affiliate system where developers who choose to distribute their titles on the platform can earn a percentage of the sales generated by users who install and run Impulse.  Affiliate revenue can earned through any purchase made by users through Impulse, not just for a given developer's own products.  For publishers, this affiliate revenue can be on top of any royalties they already stand to earn.  Stardock is definitely trying to make Impulse an attractive platform for developers and publishers to push their software.

Impulse is set to go live this April 17th.  The first game title designed for digital distribution over the platform is Gas Powered Games' Demigod, which will not feature any heavy handed digital rights management (DRM) enforcement to curb software piracy.  Again, part of the way around this will be online activation, and possibly the regular downloadable updates from companies.  In addition to games, Impulse will also be home to desktop applications for Windows-based PCs.

Beta 5 now open for testing

The latest Firefox beta was released today, and boasts a ton of changes and improvements. As you'd expect, there are a number of issues at the present time, but that's why Mozilla needs your help!

This release boasts over 750 changes from the last. Below are the improvements made since Firefox 2, and in brackets, ones made in this release:

More Secure

Easier to Use (Windows/Mac/Linux integration, icons, etc.)

More Personal ("Places Organizer")

Improved Platform for Developers

Improved Performance (speed, Java, etc.)

It should be noted that extensions and add-ons installed with previous versions of the browser may not work. There are a number of other issues as well, most of which apply to all OS'. Some of these include conflicts within Gmail, feed reading issues, and some instances of hanging/crashing. The full list can be found here.

Anyone who cares to help, download the beta here. If that ain't enough to satisfy your deeply-imbued love for Mozilla Corporation, read the bug filing instructions, and then report to Bugzilla. Feeback can also be given here.

Welcom to Teh Holiez Bibul

A concentrated effort is under way, somewhere on the Internets, in translating the entire Bible into LOLSpeak. So far, about 60% of the Good Book has been converted to LOLSpeak, (also known as Internet Pigdin), with the rest scheduled to be finished in 2008. While the biblical stories remain the same, there has been some ... liberties taken. For instance, God has been replaced by the "Ceiling Cat" which has divine dominion over all, including all of the "kittens" (humans.)

Here is a selection from the book of Luke:

Ceiling Cat sended Gabriowl, a hovr d00d, to Nazareth (dat is a citi in Galilee) to a virgn naemd Mary. She wuz engajded to a d00d naemd Joseph. Gabriowl wuz liek "O hai Mary, u iz realli nice. Ceiling Cat iz wif u." Mary wuz kiend of worrid about dat.But teh hovr d00d wuz all "Doant be afraid. Ceiling Cat iz happi wif u. U iz gonna hav a kittn. Naem him Jebus. He wil be graet. He wil be teh kittn of Ceiling Cat an his daddi will give him David's chaer. He wil r00l Jacob's house forevr."

Mary wuz liek "O rly, i iz a virgn remembr." Gabriowl wuz all "Ceiling Cat wil take caer of it."Elizabeth iz goin to hav a kittn n evribodi seded it wuz imposubl." Nothin iz imposubl for Ceiling Cat."

Mary sed "I is happi to do Ceiling Cat's work. Liek u sai." N Gabriowl lefted.

The project is being undertaken as a Wiki, so that anyone can contribute by 'translating' biblical passages yet translated. The LOLSpeak project was undoubtedly influenced by the success of the popular icanhascheezburger.com website which matches funny pictures of cats with semi-sensical comments written with little regard for the conventions of the English language.

This website surely joins the Brick Testament (which depicts biblical scenes in LEGO) as being one of the more sacrilegious, humorous websites on the Interwebs.  

Here's a parting passage from Matthew 2:

king herod (teh n00b king) was campin like a ub3r n00b near der, n when he heared this he wuz liek “omfg hez in mah empaire, steelin ma gloriez (an mai cookiez wtf)?!??! n all d pplz in Jerusalem wuz leik “hey yea wtf?!” So he got all d pplz who are has teh smartz, ne he sayed “sry im n00b but lol srsly wer doez king j00 spawn?” N dey sed to him “lol.. d00d, obviusly king j00 spawns in beetleham, ceiling cat saied to sum guy wun time “oi rait dis down n stuff” n he rited: “dw beetleham, u r not teh fail, cuz from u iz gunna come dis leet d00d who cn pwn evry1 n is haz cookiez. Hez gunna save teh ppl of Israel n whatnot.”

And if you are wondering -- no, this is not an April's Fools joke. It'd be too hard to make something like this up.

UK government plans to adopt new systems to prevent kids from playing violent games, US to follow?

Dr. Tanya Byron, clinical psychologist and author of an independent report published March 20 ("Safer Children in a Digital World") is on something of a mission to help kids be safer from violent video games. At first, I was harshly opposed, but she does kind of sum it up nicely with this:

“A useful way for us all to think about this is to look at how we protect children in places of benefit and risk in the real (offline) world: public swimming pools. Here there are safety signs and information; shallow as well as deep ends; swimming aids and lifeguards; doors, locks and alarms. However children will sometimes take risks and jump into waters too deep for them or want to climb walls and get through locked doors – therefore we also teach them how to swim. We must adopt the same combination of approaches in order to enable our children and young people to navigate these exciting digital waters while supporting and empowering them to do so safely.”

So, to me, that makes sense. I mean, I've seen ten year-olds before playing San Andreas and I just don't think that's cool, so something somewhere should be in place. But should it be left to governments? Byron has garnered lots of support at that level in the UK, and the US is examining her ideas closely as well. What does that say about the state of parenthood today?

Anyway, the proposals she's put out there go something like this:

• Adopting the same classification system as film.
• Improved clarity on game content, for parents and in general.
• Improved parental controls.

• The creation of a UK Council for Child Internet Safety, established by and reporting to the Prime Minister.
• More transparency.
• Begin public information and awareness campaign, while also creating a 'one stop shop' for child internet safety.

So that's more or less it. First, the film rating system I pretty well agree with. Personally I think the current system is great (its methodology could use improvement, but the ratings themselves are fine). But you know, parents can be so busy and casual with these things, I suppose it couldn't hurt to accomodate somewhat by unifying the systems. Improved clarity could be helpful, and parental controls as well. Yeah. I believe the PS2 had parental controls for movies, why not games? This could be useful for all systems.

Now, the creation of an entire council seems to be going a bit far. All I'm asking is increased awareness and a basic set of tools to help parents raise their kids better. Do we really need a council? I mean, this is a government council, it ain't small-time stuff. I just think there's a point where you have to let parents be parents and stop trying to infiltrate and control every facet of society because you have an opinion on something. No single trailer-home parent (sorry for the stereotype, time is a factor) is going to suddenly care about what her spawn are playing simply because someone formed a council. Ooooh, a council, I'd better start actually raising my kids, a council has been formed, gentlemen!

Transparency, yes, always. Campaign/one stop shop! Yes, yes! These are all great things. The one stop shop (a website, presumably) is absolute common sense, and should've been optional ages ago. The site could include several parental control programs and whatnot, perhaps ones that could be transferred to consoles (they've all got hard drives these days, I don't see why not). Honestly, I don't see how any of this could be bad, it would just make things easier for parents and give the less mindful ones easier reason to start being so.

One thing I have noticed in the past few years is that some shops, even the ones not game-exclusive, don't sell M rated games to minors (ID is a requirement). Things used to be a lot more loose, and in a way that's cool, but in another way, imagine yourself as a parent. Would you want your kid buying the new GTA? Or going over to his/her friend's house and playing it? Kids are so impressionable; you leave them to those kind of virtual experiences at such a young age and I think it can have a negative effect on them. And this is me talking - some of you know already my feelings on freedom in the game industry, violence in games/society, etc. I'm fully behind the freedom, and think the violence thing is generally silly, but I also believe in the freedom of all people (it's an ideal I know), so, I don't want eight year-olds playing whatever violent game and then going out and comitting acts of violence, whatever they are (I can speak from experience, I watched Power Rangers and beat the crap out of people as a child, I was a maniac), because that infringes on the rights of other people.

Well, that was quite a mouthful. Now, if interested, you can read the interview Next Gen did with Dr. Byron here, and more about her proposals through the source.

Bell Canada throttling P2P traffic, and all encrypted traffic.

Some observant users of certain Canadian ISPs (such as Wireless Nomad) made an unsettling discovery recently: it turns out the they are not receiving the full service that they thought they were paying for. While it is generally assumed by most people that the big Canadian Internet Service Providers such as Bell Canada, Rogers and Shaw use technology that throttles (or limits) BitTorrent and other P2P traffic, people who are connected through smaller ISPs were thought to be immune from reduction of service -- but this doesn't seem to be the case.

As it turns out, Bell Canada recently started throttling traffic of the bandwidth that it sells to these smaller, more independent ISPs, that in turn resell service to customers. This is particularly unsettling because some of these smaller ISPs are publicly against throttling, and have been unaware that they have been unknowingly short-changing their customers -- Bell Canada never informed the ISPs that they begun to filter and selectively limit their bandwidth. After this throttling was uncovered, Bell Canada did not deny it, and reportedly said that throttling for all ISPs will be in effect on April 7th.

Some ISPs have threatened to bring this case to the courts. It is particularly troubling because you can not really get Internet service without going through one of the big providers, so if those companies are limiting the resources that they give to independent resellers of Internet service, that it begs the question: who determines what entails the proper usage of Internet service? The Canadian government, or the handful of companies that control the distribution of Internet access?

Science fiction writer and DRM-fighting technology advocate Cory Doctorow seemed rather upset by the situation today on his blog, Biong Biong: "Bell Canada's position is that the Canadian Internet belongs to it, and that it has the right and duty to simply toss out packets based on which protocol they're running on, in order to maximize profits...Bell Canada's logic is that they should have the ability to reach into the stream of packets and secretly and discriminatorily chuck out packets that it has some prejudice against. This could be the beginning of the end of the Internet."

As pointed out by Ars Technica, Bell Canada's move to further disrupt and censor bandwidth comes just a few days after Canada's government funded television network, the CBC, has decided to take the innovative step of releasing its new reality show, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister, not only on through the airwares, but also through P2P networks.

Wants to change things up after getting crushed by a cheating wife

Things were going pretty well for Ian Usher. He didn't have many complaints; he had a good job, good friends, a nice house, and a garage full of toys. He had a spa and a kite-board. He had a motorcycle and a jet-ski. And he had a great wife. A really awesome wife that he was madly in love with. A magnificent wife that he had the misfortune to find out was having an affair.

Needless to say he was a bit upset. A bit hear-broken. A bit completely and utterly crushed even: “I met and married the best girl in the world. I loved her with all my heart, and she loved me back too...[and] now live alone in a house that was being built for us to live in together. I still have all of our furniture that we bought together in our previous home. I still have the car we owned. I am still surrounded by all the memorabilia of our years together.”

In an effort to move on, Ian Usher has decided to sell his life on eBay. Not his actual human-life, his body or soul or anything, but pretty much everything that he has in life in his Perth. All of his possessions -- everything he owns including his home, car, and other things stated above -- and also his job, his network of friendships, are all going up for auction on June 22nd, 2008.

“Don't forget, the starting price for my life is just $1.00!! With my house alone being valued at around $420,000.00, I would suggest getting a bid in early on,” he says.

If your life is utter trash, and you would like to swap places with Mr. Usher, you can check out his website over here. Then it'll be time for this sad, adventurous chap to start over: “[On the day] it is all sold and settled I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all, and get on the train, with no idea where I am going or what the future holds for me.”

Ah eBay. What would we do without it? It'd be so much harder to sell your life in a newspaper ad.

100,000+ people sign petition to have image removed.

For many Muslims, it is forbidden to depict the image of Prophet Muhammad. You might have been aware of this having heard of the massive furor and outrage over a certain Danish cartoon last year. 

For Wikipedia, the stated ethos behind their organization is to offer information from a neutral standpoint, with no special discretions given to any particular group of people.

These two tenets have come into conflict recently over the entry on Islam in Wikipedia, which has a photograph of a piece of a 15th century artwork that features Muhammad's face. A Islamic guy who would like to see this image taken down started a petition, and a blog. The petition so far has garnered over 107,000 names.

Wikipedia doesn't seem to be budging, however. This is from a FAQ they had on the matter: "Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group."

Previous to this incident, Wikipedia also was under some pressure from the German government to remove 1930's era photographs of the Hitler Youth, which is an outlawed organization in Germany in contemporary times. In that case a concession was reached by reducing the amount of images available on the site.

Microsoft wants more Internet control.

Microsoft has apparently made  a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo - offering a whopping 62% over yesterday's closing share price.

Coming on the heels of Yahoo's poorer than expected fourth quarter results, and the resulting announcement that Yahoo intends to cut 1,000 jobs, the Microsoft bid may save a lot of jobs - and not incidentally, make Microsoft an even larger Internet behemoth.

Previous attempts by Microsoft to buy Yahoo have failed, however this very public bid may be intended to greatly appeal to Yahoo's share holders by promising them about 15% more than the last year's average price of Yahoo shares.

If successful, Microsoft would have a better chance of competing with Google for internet advertising revenues.

New Linux Streamer promises to deliver "game streaming" from PCs to PS3s (running Linux) over local network; meanwhile remote streaming coming Q1 2008

StreamMyGame is preparing to deliver streaming of PC games over local networks, with plans to bring remote streaming access over broadband internet by "March 2008". With its 3MB "Streamer" plugin, gamers will be able to set up a Windows XP, Vista or Linux (natch) compatible PC to run as a server for their games, which client devices will then stream from.

The Game Stream can be recorded to a file, broadcast, transmitted over the home network and will soon be able to be sent over the internet and played on the remote computer. The encrypted keyboard commands from the remote computer are captured and transmitted back over the network and used to play the game.

The client can be a similar PC setup, or Linux-based device. Interestingly, StreamMyGame's official press release strongly emphasizes the PlayStation 3 (which supports optional Linux OS installations) as a possible client in this regard. Clients will need to run the Streamer Linux Player as well, though it doesn't need to have the game itself installed like the host streamer device does. Of equal interest (or even higher depending on your gaming priorities) is the Streamer's support for DirectX10 games, which should keep the application ready for the high end stuff down the road.

Gamers will need to register at StreamMyGame's homepage to download the free Streamer application. Registration itself is free at the "Standard" level, but interested parties can opt for either the "Premium" and "Unlimited" level memberships which do require a $9.99 USD and $19.99 USD annual fee, respectively. Those willing to go Premium or Unlimited can enjoy additional benefits like game streaming at 720p and 1080p resolutions, which shuld be very nice for PS3 owners with supporting displays, and even gameplay recording. More details can be found on the developer's website.

Members to www.StreamMyGame.com can;

• Register for our free Standard membership or subscribe for our Premium and Unlimited memberships
• Build gaming communities
• Record gameplay to video and upload these videos to the web
• Broadcast games live over networks and at LAN parties
• Stream games over their local network so they can be played on any computer in their home
• Stream games over their local network so PC games can be played on Linux PCs and the PS3
• Share their games over the internet so they can be played at remote locations by other gamers*
• Improve their game skills with dual play of single player games

* Broadband player released Q1 2008.

“Destroying The P2P’s, One Step at a Time” say anonymous 'warez' scenesters

It's a doggy-eat-doggy world out there, out on the rough and tumble high-seas of Internet piracy. Most P2P torrent-tracker sites have to worry about being shutdown by the forces of copyright protection, such as the FBI and lobby groups like the MPAA. But now, it seems there is a new threat to torrent trackers: CELLKiLL -- a member of a group of angry 'warez' scene pirates who don't like P2P'ers.

Two BitTorrent Tracker websites, SuperTorrents and Feed The Net (FTN) have been surgically hacked-up by a small group of semi-anonymous warez-wizards, working in what is often referred to as the 'scene.' (The group-structured, mostly non-profit 'scene', is basically the original source of all pirated software, and much pirated movies and music in the world.)

A notification of the wrath unleashed upon the admin of the tracker SuperTorrent has been circulating around the dark corners of the Internet:

"Now this is the story all about how Ersan’s life got flipped turned upside down and I’d like to take a minute and just sit right there and tell you how Ersan became the prince of a town called bel air. This weeks source of lulz is provided free of charge via a site called supertorrents.org and the nicest Administrator you’ve ever met, Ersan."

With a little bit of work, angry pirates from 'the scene' hacked into many of "Ersan's" online accounts: including a PayPal account, and some email accounts. The scene pirate guys posted "Ersan's " real name, address, age, and other personal information onto some websites. They all so deleted a bunch of his online accounts, and donated the balance of SuperTorrent's donations account -- a grand total of about $2000 USD -- to a charity that belongs to a religious group that Ersan allegedly made inappropriate comments about. "Maximum lulz were achieved," reportedly  wrote on of the people involved in the hacking.

And pretty much the same thing happened to the admin of FTN: he had his online accounts hacked, and a great deal of his personal info posted online.

Why are these particular pirates angry with P2P sites? It seems that part of it is that hackers believe that the administrators of P2P trackers are making money and taking credit for files that wouldn't be there in the first place if it were not for 'the scene.' Here's another excerpt from the scene guys that hacked FTN: "His Torrent site steals thousands after thousands of releases from the scene, and then he has the nerve to go and say to other P2P’s STOP STEALING RELEASES FROM US?!??!? ILL BAN YO ASS! But wait, how is this even possible??"

Another part of the disgruntlement seems to be that all the attention P2P sites have been getting from the authorities is infringing on the security of the 'scene', which does not benefit from being under the spotlight.

CELLKiLL may or may not have any more trackers targeted for future attacks: “We have yet again erased another torrent admin from existence. Other Groups, do your part to make the scene what it was in the beginning. Secure."

You read more about these wacky happenstances at TorrentFreak here and here.

Tell me your "Secret Crush", and all of your shopping habits

You can do a lot of things on Facebook. You can organize parties. You can join protest groups. You can even post pictures of yourself in compromising positions for all of your friends and relatives to see. And now, to bring in 2008, you can also be tricked into downloading spyware on Facebook. 

A new Facebook widget is out in the wild. The app is called Secret Crush. Supposedly, it lets you know who your secret crush is (--as if you had one, ugly-face!) If you fall for finding out your crush, the program tries to install and spread spyware -- known as the Zango variety -- onto your computer. Like all good spyware, this nefarious application tracks web surfing and collects information on you.

As a Facebookian twist on spyware, the Secret Crush app demands that users send out invites for the app to 5 different friends, before their Secret Crushes are revealed. Because the Facebook Secret Crush app forces people to waive all the rights to privacy when installing the widget (like pretty much all Facebook apps), it falls into a grey area of legality. But the bad part of it all is, even if you send out 5 invites, you never are told who your Secret Crush is.

Research group Fortinet has been tracking this latest in spyware, and have alerted the Facebook powers that be. Incredibly, Fortinet estimates that a whopping 1 million Facebook users are infected by this app.

Hook up with other Skype users over PSP, and possibly dial landline and mobile phone numbers as well

Sony Computer Entertainment has always been planning VoIP (voice-over-IP) for the PlayStation Portable ever since it announced Go!Messenger for the UK last year. While Go!Messenger is set to launch in Europe this month, SCE may have something similiar in store for North Americans with Skype. Eagle-eyed readers visiting Sony's special CES (Consumer Electronics Show) website have caught onto a (very brief) blurb highlighting upcoming support for the popular voice/video chat client on the handheld:

Call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP system.

Skype definitely brings the PSP that much closer to being a mobile phone (though dialing landline and mobile phone numbers will probably require a fee as with the PC Windows version), despite SCE's denials over making an actual "PSP phone" thus far. It appears we'll have to wait until CES kicks off this weekend before we get more official confirmation, including further details on a launch date and features. Will phoning between PC and PSP users be possible as well?

Many orcs and dwarves vote for Ron Paul, apparently

American politics will be making an entry into World of Warcraft soon: on New Years day, a guild plans to show support for libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, with a long, solidarity march.

A guild is going to made up solely for the event, and will be called "RP Revolution", on the Whisperwind server. In the evening of New Years day, the march is going to start at Ironforge, and go to Stormwind (which is apparently a far distance to walk.) "It's freedom, and the entire world needs more of it... Ron Paul is only the start!" said 'ClayTrainor', participator in the march, in the Ron Paul forums.

Some of the march participators fear that Blizzard might be upset with them for doing this march. One person called 'Birdlady' said this: "In WoW world this is a form of civil disobedience so be prepared to pay the consequences of doing this. It could be nothing, a 1, 2 or 3 day suspension or a permanent ban. I just cannot risk the chance of getting banned, so I will have to sit this out."

If there were any candidate for a suitable for a virtual WoW march, Ron Paul would seem the most likely, as he has had very strong grassroots support from many Internet-saavy Americans, this far into the Presidential campaigns.

Note: image above was taken from a website organizing the march, called wow.revolutioni.st.

Music search engine's linking to pirated files causing legal troubles

Apparently there is a lot of copy-infringement going on in China, if you believe all the mountains of evidence and swarms of reports.

In recent copy-infringement news, a Beijing court found Yahoo! China guilty of "deep linking" infringed music in its search engine. The international anti-piracy group sponsored by the recording industry, the IFPI, was behind the litigation.

A IFPI spokesperson said: “The ruling against Yahoo! China is extremely significant in clarifying copyright rules for Internet music services in China. By confirming that Yahoo! China’s service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing Court has effectively set the standard for Internet companies throughout the country.” 

The IFPI was also quoted as saying that the entire music sales for the country of China in 2006 were a (laughably) small $76 million for all of 2006. They also went on to say that they believed a full %99 of all music downloaded in China was done that wasn't fully respectful of international copyright laws.

User-determined pricing for latest album made them lots of cash

Musical maverick genius Thom Yorke spoke recently to Wired magazine about their In Rainbows experiement.  "Every record for the last four — including my solo record — has been leaked. So the idea was like, we'll leak it, then." If you somehow didn't hear the story, Radiohead made headlines recently by releasing their latest album In Rainbows onto the Internet, with users having the option to pay a donation for the album or not. 

"[The optional pricing idea] was [manager Chris Hufford's] idea. We all thought he was barmy. As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, 'Are you sure about this?' But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn't nihilistic, implying that the music's not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that's just people having a little faith in what we're doing."

And it turns out the experiment was a great success. Besides generating a huge buzz for their album, and turning many heads in the music industry, the donation-download system even turned out nicely for Radiohead's bottom line: "In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff."

In Rainbows will be making a more traditional appearance as a CD in a store near you, in January.

Xbox Live Video Marketplace gets more content

Microsoft and Viacom have forged a new five-year partnership which sees the software/console giant licensing video from the media company for distribution over MSN and Xbox Live Marketplace. The Xbox 360 online service in particular already enjoys the patronage of digital programming from Warner Bros. and ESPN. By tapping into Viacom, the Xbox Live Marketplace stands to get new material from MTV, Paramount Pictures and Comedy Central. Viacom seems to be warming up to the prospect of gettings its shows and movies onto the Internet, though of course it's still opposed to seeing its stuff on YouTube.

Microsoft will get access to long and short-form TV and movie titles from Viacom units MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Paramount Pictures for use on Microsoft properties such as MSN and Xbox 360. Given that a wide array of Viacom content is already available to Xbox 360 users via Xbox LIVE Marketplace, the deal mainly adds entertainment from BET Networks. Microsoft’s license to run Viacom’s content is also non-exclusive.

In return, Viacom acquires a new ally for online advertising in Microsoft, but it does so by ditching former ad platform provider DoubleClick (which is already being purchased by Google anyways). Microsoft is hoping to leverage its Atlas online advertising platform, which it scored by acquiring aQuantive back in May, to sell ads. The deal between the two companies is valued at around $500 million USD, though this could increase based on ad spending, sale of ad space and licensing fees.

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(Image source: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters)

Get all the spam you can, and get £300 for your troubles

McAfee is looking for a handful of volunteers for a SPAM study. The idea is to get some people around the world to respond to every single piece of spam mail they recieve in a 30 day period, to see what kind of escallation occurs. McAfee plans to call this the 'Super Spam Me' study (an obivous play off of the popular documentary 'Super Size Me.') For your troubles, and loss of an email address, McAfee will be repaying volunteers with nice prize of £300 -- not too bad!

The company is only looking for a few volunteers though,so I'm not sure as to your odds of getting in. However, if you are interested, the study will begin in the U.K, but McAfee will be looking for American volunteers soon. To be considered as a possible volunteer you can email your age, gender, occupation, daytime telephone, and your average number of hours spent on the Internet to superspam@redconsultancy.com.