This Week in the Universe rounds up some of the best stories from around the web you may have missed this week.
If only these trolls were as weak to sunlight as those in Middle Earth… Hopefully they are weak to Mojang’s lawyers.
Patent troll targets Minecraft
“Step 1: Wake up. Step 2: Check email. Step 3: See we’re being sued for patent infringement. Step 4: Smile,” Notch wrote at Twitter. “Unfortunately for them, they’re suing us over a software patent. If needed, I will throw piles of money at making sure they don’t get a cent.”
It may be a while before you will find it in a computer you can buy off the shelf but this development in Graphene could make a big difference in the capabilities of processors in the long run.
Graphene transistors in high-performance demonstration
“To make faster computer chips, the industry has been working relentlessly to shrink the individual transistors – and is heading for a physical limit to just how small they can go.
Since charges zip through Graphene hundreds of times faster than in silicon, a jump in speed could be made with no decrease in size – but efforts to integrate Graphene into chips have been difficult.”
Even if you have a 3DS with virtual console capabilities the number of classic games you can play on the system is severely limited compared to those available on the Wii. This article by The How To Geek shows how you can get around this and play (nearly) all your favorite games from the 8/16 bit era along with homebrew software on any DS system.
How To Turn Your Nintendo DS Into a Retro Game Machine
“The Nintendo DS might not be the most powerful handheld gaming system on the market but it’s plenty powerful to emulate many arcade games and console systems of yesteryear. If you’re willing to invest a small amount of money and a small amount of time, you can easily turn your Nintendo DS into a veritable Swiss Army knife of gaming goodness.”
An interesting view on the cutthroat pricing of digital goods, the author is talking about ebooks but the download market for games is even more saturated with extreme sales.
Ebook bargains: is there a heavier price to pay?
“But the thrill of a bargain soon gave way to post-purchase guilt. After all, there’s no such thing as a cheap ebook. Seduced by predatory pricing, I had put selfish short-term gain over the long-term interests of civilisation: hastening the demise of bookshops and publishers.”
They won right? When The Pirate Bay was blocked by UK ISPs that was a victory right? Of course not, and as TorrentFreak reports it was not even a partial one.
Censoring The Pirate Bay is Futile, ISPs Reveal
“The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet.
Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and more are expected to follow.
The idea behind these blockades is that they will help to decrease online piracy. However, more and more evidence is appearing that suggests that this aim is not being fulfilled. In fact, the blocking attempts may actually be having the opposite effect.”
Nathan Grayson at Rock Paper Shotgun tells us about the problems with what Kickstarter has started in the Gaming Industry.
Power To The People: The Trouble With Crowd-Sourcing
“Crowd-sourcing. Crowd-funding. The next big thing. A flash-in-the-pan fad. Call it whatever you want, but right now, the gaming industry’s fallen in love with the idea of putting its fate in the hands of heaping piles of people. Double Fine Adventure was – so clearly that you could see it from space – the point where everyone took notice. Shockingly, crowds did, in fact, exist before that moment, but DFA caused them to really, truly become a thing in the industry’s eyes.”
And finishing off with a video (which is actually just over a week old I know) we have the latest Live Stream (live then, not now, clearly) of Mane6’s Fighting is Magic showing just how much it has progressed since I last looked at it. It is a long video so if you just want gameplay rather than a walk-through of character move sets and other technical features about the game mechanics you may want to skip ahead to the 40min mark.
Have a good week everyone!
Gaming and Tech Network 