Month: August 2006

An infamous US software pirate has been given a six year prison sentence after raking in $4.1 million from selling hooky applications. Danny Ferrer peddled copied versions of Adobe, Macromedia and Autodesk software on his site, buyusa.com, between 2002 and October 2005.

Ferrer, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of criminal copyright infringement following an operation that reportedly cost developers more than $20 million. The crook had amassed an impressive collection of loot which he was made to surrender to the authorities, including two Cessna planes, a Rotorway helicopter, a 1992 Lamborghini, an ambulance, a flight simulator and a 28-foot speedboat.

As tempting as it is for us to sell you ripped off software and buy ourselves an island in the Seychelles, you can download legitimate trials of Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash from Softonic.

Have you heard about Yardbarker? Apparently it’s the sports equivalent to Digg whereas you can post your articles, rate others and come up with relevant news for your favorite team or player. The Internet and web 2.0 are changing the way we interact with the news and this is illustrated via all the exciting sports-related software out there.

If you don’t have cable TV, you can use TVU Player to watch it streaming over internet. This application uses P2P principles to allow users to connect to channels from all over the world. That’s how I got to see some World Cup games last June. I also recommend installing SpyderBar, a customizable ticker, to receive your constant dose of sports news. For all the statistics die hards out there, League Pad is what your looking for. You can download results, standings and team information for football and soccer teams in the States and create whole sorts of statistics out of it. Little league coaches will take a liking to MotionClip!. The best way to use it is to record your team’s game, upload some sequences on your PC and use the application to analyze player movements, reactions and set pieces. At least it’s a cheap and modern way of working on your strategy, like a pro.

A story today from Arstechnica reveals that 21 year old Christopher Maxwell received a 37 month jail sentence for launching a botnet which, according to the source, allowed him and his friends to reap as much as $100,000 dollars. Not all hackers out there have an evil mind bent on wreaking havoc and anarchy in government and institutional networks, but the truth is they sometimes don’t realize the consequences of their actions. Maxwell’s botnet caused Seattle’s Northwest Hospital to switch to its “disaster plan” and teachers from Colton Unified School district “lost crucial instructional time”. Maxwell did measure how far his actions could take him when the sentence came down though .

As institutions rely more and more on networks and computerized information, we’re bound to see this type of news more often and probably at a greater scale. That’s why it’s essential to remind time and time again that you need to protect your PC. You can’t go without Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware or Spybot’s Search and Destroy. Both these solutions are free, easy to use and analyze your PC fairly quickly.

Microsoft has installed a panic button into UK editions of MSN Messenger and Live Messenger in order to protect kids from online sexual predators. The software behemoth has linked up with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to add a special button to the chat service, meaning that youngsters are just one click away from making a report to police if they are concerned their online ‘buddy’ is a sex offender.

“We take the safety and security of young people online very seriously,” explains Carrie Bogner, Senior Director, Citizenship, Windows Live. “People can already control who they do and don’t allow onto their Messenger buddy list – the new CEOP tab launched today is another safety feature that will make Windows Live and MSN Messenger safer still.”

“Behind the ‘report abuse’ button will sit police and intelligence officers who have been specially trained to tackle child sex abuse. We will tell you how to capture information and how to seize online discussions and then proactively do all we can to track down the perpetrator,” he explained.

What’s more, through the icon and link to the CEOP web site, users from anywhere in the world can access the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) – an international alliance of law enforcement agencies – of which the CEOP Centre is the UK’s representative. Hopefully this will ensure that more Net perverts are snared and exposed and make using a computer a safer past-time for children.

It seems Rockstar Games has decided to step out of the controversy spotlight and let some other players get in on some action. With the release of what is probably the best table-tennis simulation ever, modestly named Table Tennis, Rockstar has managed to wrong foot all their critics who were lying in wait for another slash and dash role player much like the latest title from Eidos – Reservoir Dogs.

Already banned in Australia and New Zealand, Reservoir Dogs promises not only to let you follow in the footsteps of the characters from the cult classic, but will also fill in some of the unanswered questions from the film. However, before it’s even been released, it has come under fire from British Police who are ‘disappointed’ to find this kind of violent game coming out at a time when “police officers are suffering more attacks than ever before”.

A collective sigh must just about be the total effect of this criticism as we set off on this familiar beaten path once again. Comments like these have already been shown as a great form of publicity for the games in question and when it comes to the crunch, the quality of the game will decide whether it’s a hit or a miss, so there isn’t much point in kicking up a storm in the first place. You’ve got to wonder what more can be said on the matter except “Will we ever learn?”

If, like the Softonic Team, you spent your wonder years in the company of moustachioed plumbers and blue hedgehogs then Console Classix is the perfect vehicle to transport you back to those times. The application puts a new spin on emulators such as MAME by allowing you to download and play games for the NES, SNES, Atari, Genesis and Master System legally, rather than having to creep around the Net’s dirty side streets looking for dodgy ROMs.

Getting into the action takes just a few moments and involves nothing more than loading the program selecting a console then picking a game from the list. The app then fetches the game via the Net and you’re ready to start jumping on mushrooms or punching aliens. The list of games is immense and you could have hours of fun just reading it and recalling those nights spent button-bashing in your bedroom.

Ultimately, the downside of Console Classix is that you need to pay a $5 per month charge to access Genesis, Super Nintendo and Master System games. However, if you’ve ever owned a NES or an Atari 2600 then you’ll realize that this isn’t such a problem due to the massive back catalogue of classics such as Paperboy, Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. Of course there are a few stinkers on the list (Back to the Future should never have been made into a game) but finding the long-forgotten gems makes using Console Classix a real dream.

Ever since Nintendo came out with its Brain Age title there’s been a preoccupation that we’re all slowly and irrevocably losing the ability to use our grey matter as efficiently as we apparently could in our teens. Along with this sudden self-consciousness that we’re falling into a hole of senility has come a variety of titles that will restore your mind and maintain it at its optimum “level”, just like Brain Workout does.

To get started you create a user that will then be used to record all your scores and your overall progress on the way to a sharper brain. There are five categories – Logic, Memory, Numerical, Spatial, and Verbal – each containing three games that can be played at five difficulty levels. The main purpose of the game is the “Daily Brain Test” that gives you one puzzle from each category and records your results for the progress chart. You can also practice the games as much as you like, uploading your score to the Brain Workout web site, but that won’t particularly help you in the quest for the perfect mind.

Continue reading “Brain WorkOut: Stretch that grey matter”