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The World Wide Web at 30: We got the free and open internet we deserve
This isn't the internet that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned when he laid the groundwork for the World Wide Web 30 years ago today. Rather than the free and open online utopia he envisioned, "the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division," he wrote in 2018, "swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas." And, by God, he's going to fix it -- even if he has to break the entire system to do so.
Tim Berners-Lee project gives you more control over web data
After incidents like Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, it'd be understandable if you felt like your data wasn't really under your control. Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee hopes to put that data back in your hands -- he's been collaborating with people at MIT and elsewhere on a startup (Inrupt) whose open source project, Solid, gives you the final say over personal info. You can decide where the data goes, who's allowed to see certain elements,which apps can access that data. You can peek at the same data with two different apps, and share data with whoever you like.
BioWare: The Old Republic will be 'one of the biggest launches ever in the history of gaming'
While Star Wars: The Old Republic looks to be on track for a holiday release, BioWare's Dr. Greg Zeschuk admits to being "daunted" by the size and scope of the project. "This game's launch is going to be one of the biggest launches ever in the history of gaming," he said. When talking with Eurogamer, Zeschuk said that the studio is trying to make sure that everything is "solid" enough before it pulls the trigger and releases the game, but it is also trying to get the game out the doors as fast as it can. Currently, the game is being tested by thousands of players daily, a number that is expected to increase dramatically once September's expanded testing cycle hits. "It's literally live right now," he said. Whether The Old Republic will stand or fall, it won't be for a lack of preparation on BioWare's behalf. Zeschuk paints a picture of the hectic work being done behind the scenes: "It's one thing to get the game done, another to ensure you can login thousands of people a minute. It's a different sort of requirement. The things you need to get done to ship this are very different from a standard game. A standard game, this is like five of them, right? Our job is really simple: making sure it's great when it comes out."
Lichborne: Glyphs, gems and enchants for the blood tank
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the latest news, tips and strategies for the death knight class. Last week, we went into the basic outlines of what makes a blood tank: your talent choices, your gearing choices, your threat rotations and things such as that. Once you've got all that down, though, the next thing you can do to take your tanking to the next level is to get some decent gems, glyphs and enchantments. They'll separate an adequate 5-man tank from a tank who's ready to step on and start taking on the game in earnest.
Emporia Solid and Elegance hands-on
Emporia landed at MWC with a couple sets geared specifically to the elderly, the Emporia Elegance (pictured left) and the aptly named Solid. Both of these freshly launched phones are targeted squarely at your grannie's generation, that's to say they include large easy to read fonts, huge keys, and a pretty slim feature set. The Elegance will ship in both black and white, features a 1.8-inch OLED high contrast display, an extra loud ringer, hearing aid compatibility, and 900 / 1800 GSM. Elegance, the slicker of the two launched phones will retail for €129 (roughly $175) and will hit the shops round about Q2 of this year. The Solid is a rugged -- at least looking -- phone for seniors into extreme sports and adds Bluetooth into the mix. The Solid will retail for €199 (roughly $275) and also launched in Q2. Gallery is right down below.%Gallery-85944%
Macworld 2010: Hands-on with the Blue Mikey
Blue Microphones are on the show floor here at Macworld, and they invited us by their booth to take a look (and a listen) at the newest version of the Blue Mikey iPhone microphone. And with most of Blue's products (I have a Snowball that I use for podcasting, and it works and sounds great), it's quite impressive, producing excellent sound in a well-designed and easy-to-use form. Earlier this year, Blue announced the second revision of the Mikey, with enhanced features for $20 more than the first $79 version. That's the one we used, and it looked and worked great. They've added a line input (for recording guitars), and a USB passthrough, as well as put the entire body on a swivel (so it can even swing all the way around and point forward while shooting video on the 3G.
Lichborne: A death knight primer for tanking 5-man dungeons
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly death knight column. This week, your host is in a bit of a tanking mood. Those Emblems of Frost don't earn themselves! So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel. Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I've heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy. Now technically, this is how it's almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we've had a taste of true power, I'm sure we're all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank. Whether you're a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column's for you.
Lichborne: PvE Gems for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly dose of Death Knight discussion.Now that we've covered most standard pemutations of gear gathering in past Lichborne columns, I figured this week would be a good time to start talking about taking the extra steps to really trick out your gear. This week, will focus on gems. Not only will this help you take your gear to the next level, but it gives me a good excuse to talk about some new discoveries and discussions going on as we try to figure out the best ways to squeeze the most DPS out of a Death Knight. So to start, let's talk about which statistics you'll want to focus on when you gem.
Scattered Shots: A PvE gem and enchant guide for Hunters
Welcome to this week's edition of Scattered Shots, which is dedicated to shiny things and dust.So by now you've seen our normal dungeon gear guide, our heroic dungeon gear guide, our reputation gear guide, and our holiday gift guide. Between all of them, you should be able to put together a nice solid set of gear that should let you tackle 10-man Naxxramas pretty easily. But grabbing the gear is the easy part. To go the extra mile, you need to grab those gems and enchantments. Let's look at some of the best gems and enchantments you can take along to secure your place in the DPS charts in Naxxramas.
Lichborne: Gearing up to tank Naxxramas
Welcome to Lichborne, The weekly Death Knight column, where your host is recruiting only the most pro critters for his raiding team. So by now, I'm sure many of you Death Knights have managed to follow our last tanking gear guide and have put together a pretty decent tank set that's gotten them through a few heroics, but now it's time for the next step: Getting ready to tank Naxxramas. You'll find that while a lot of your gear is probably "good enough," you'll still want to look for a few important upgrades to kick you up another notch so you can be at your best coming into Naxxramas to tank. Let's look at a few heroic upgrades that you can grab to be the best tank you can be heading into 10 man Naxxramas content.Before we start, there's two things you should remember: One, I'm pretty much following the logic I laid down in the Death Knight statistics primer a few weeks back, so if you want to know why I picked a certain item, the answer is probably there, and two, whatever you do, remember to hit 540 defense skill. You'll need that to survive against the bosses.
Visuals surface of Samsung's bricklike "Solid"
In what appears to be homage to old school iDEN cellphones everywhere, Samsung looks to be preparing its latest phone for Orange, a rugged little beast appropriately named "Solid." The important details are a little sparse at the moment, but we hear the device will sport a VGA camera and by the looks of the keypad, it will also have a speakerphone. If it's real -- and frankly, we have no good reason to suspect otherwise -- it should hit Orange come December.
Wii Warm Up: Snake's Revenge
Some slightly disparaging remarks were made recently on this blog about Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake. While a certain contingent of our staff may doubt the fighting ability of the son of Big Boss, but we know the truth. Snake is hardcore. He may ask a lot of questions ("Metal Gear?" "A Hind-D?") and he may have a habit of hiding in boxes, but he definitely has the combat prowess required for Smash Bros., made evident by the fact that he smashed his own brother.This post is a big "!" for Snake fans. We can hear your thoughts. Come out of hiding and tell us how awesome Solid Snake is!
Sonic confirmed for SSB: Brawl?
People have speculated for quite some time on what out-of-company characters would be joining Solid Snake in the upcoming Super Smash Bros: Brawl. Sonic was an obvious choice, of course, but check out the above picture, seen in the Swedish Nintendo mag +N.Yes, readers, we know, it's still quite dubious. Still, we can't resist such a beauty of a rumor. Now we just need a NiGHTs 2 confirmation, Goldeneye on the virtual console, and the ability for the Wii to hack into our brains and overwrite our senses with direct input from the game.
Gaming Nexus interviews Killzone director
The Killzone posts keep rolling in. We first spotted the demo, found out the November OPM will feature it and have reviewed even reviewed the demo, but now here's an Gaming Nexus interview with Mathijs de Jonge, the games lead designer and director.In the interview, Mathijs explains how the game ties in with its predecessor, how many levels to expect, vehicle use and says the game is nothing like Metal Gear Solid. It's kind of funny because I even made mention of the two game's looking very similar in my review. GamingNexus: Killzone: Liberation is quite a departure from the original Killzone on the PlayStation 2. Why did you decide to switch from a first-person shooter to an overhead shooter? MdJ : We wanted to create a new experience within the Killzone Universe. Pulling out the camera to a third person perspective was the thing that we thought would change the experience most. So when we started working on this game this was the very first we tried. Then we decided to stick with it as it gave us a lot of inspiration for new mechanics and areas of focus such as improving the AI system.(Via Gaming Nexus)
Raiden unplayable in Metal Gear Solid 4
You probably read that headline with a smile on your face. Even so, Kojima-san has revealed the infamous Raiden will not be a playable character in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. But he is going to be pretty integral to the overall narrative.He also goes into detail about the story. Nanotechnology, military strength, Senior Citizen Snake... it's all there. Older characters will be making an appearance as well. Naomi Hunter, Campbell and even Meryl Silverburgh will be along for the ride. One of the best quotes is from when Kojima stated why he's even bothering with this new game when MGS3 was supposed to be his (and Snake's) last title: "I decided to make MGS4 because so many mysteries still remained, and I couldn't ignore all the people who had requested a new game." So keep the requests coming and he won't be able to refuse! Check out the Show Maybe? publication to see the original.
Kojima speaks out some more on MGS4!
So if Afrika didn't do it for you and nothing else tickles your fancy on PS3 just yet, then you know there's always Metal Gear Solid 4 to look forward to. Hideo Kojima shared some great information about the gameplay for the upcoming title in an interview with PSM2. One of the things he talked about was the "octo cam" suit. This puppy can adapt by changing color and form based on your surroundings. Of course that will happen on the fly, and most interestingly enough is only possible on the PlayStation 3 (the graphical effect that is, according to Kojima). He also talked about the destructible environments. Only certain things will have that potential, so don't expect everything to just go down in flames. He wrapped it up with his infamous sign-off stating that this would be his last Metal Gear title ("No guys I'm serious this time...").
PSP impressions: Metal Gear Digital Graphic Novel
My timing on snatching up a good 5 minutes with the Metal Gear Digital Graphic Novel was impeccable. Situated directly across the walkway of the Tecmo booth and next to Atlus' wonderful booth, the seat on the white bench called to me with the strength of a siren's song. I didn't think I would be able to hear anything from the unit, yet surprisingly there was little traffic there for the 5 minutes leading up to the Tecmo girls strutting out for their annual thing while I watched the digital comic unfold.As for the artwork and voice work on the E3 build I was privileged enough to spend some time with, they were both very good. The panning was tastefully executed and Ocelot's dialogue, which took up most of what little time I had for the demo, was rich and powerful. Their pistol dual re-enacted from Metal Gear Solid was incredible. Overall the package seemed to be on par with, if not better than, The Silent Hill Experience UMD and has easily made my list of 'must buy' when it releases next month.
MGS4 to be Kojima's last Snake outing (seriously)
So Hideo Kojima has sworn off future involvement with the Metal Gear series... again. But like the Rolling Stones or a comeback tour that won't go away, he's sure to return! Or maybe not. This wouldn't be the first time he's called it his last, but he says he's for real when talking about MGS4."Well, I say this every time but this is going to be my last Metal Gear... so you could say that the hidden theme here is that I want Snake to die so that I can move on." Strong words from a true visionary. Anyone taking bets on how long it'll be before he's back?
Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer for everyone else
Here's a bandwidth-friendly download of the full MGS4 trailer that you can stream. It packs more punch than its three minute counterpart, but alas - there are no subs for the Japanese dialogue. Of course that doesn't take away from the overall experience, so give it a download and check it out for yourself.
