IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 07/08/2012

Demonoid shut down as gift to United States government
It's been a roller coaster of emotion for users of the popular torrent and tracker site Demonoid. The site has been down for around a week now, and it would appear that the downtime is set to continue. The site was originally taken offline by a DDoS and users rejoiced when they heard that this was the case.

However, more bad news has hit users of the site. Out of Ukraine, word has come that the site has been shutdown by authorities as a gift for the United States government. The takedown was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky to the United States where the topic was copyright infringement.

"Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them," an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed. "Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site." It seems that this week has been a bad week for the site.

"Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators," the source added. The management has back-ups of the site and appear to not be in custody. In fact, the admin is supposedly located in Mexico, about half-way around the world from the servers. Only time will tell if the site will be brought back online.

More fire for iPad mini rumors: Mr. Jobs 'very receptive' to 7" screen
Rumors have been heating up regarding a possible iPad mini that sports a 7-inch screen. As of late, the rumors have been identifying a launch next to the upcoming iPhone 5. Publicly, Steve Jobs was completely against an iPad mini: "The reason we [won't] make a 7-inch tablet isn't because we don't want to hit that price point, it's because we think the screen is too small to express the software."

It turns out that it could all have been clever misdirection. As part of the on-going litigation between Samsung and Apple, new e-mails have been released which show that Mr. Jobs was actually receptive to the idea. The e-mail, sent January 24, 2011 by Eddy Cue, was received by Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, and Tim Cook.

It reads:

Having used a Samsung Galaxy, I tend to agree with many of the comments below (except actually moving off the iPad). I believe there will be a 7" market and we should do one. I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, facebook and video very compelling on a 7". Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable.

Wikipedia suffers outage after networking issues
The outage you may have seen on Wikipedia earlier this morning was not another SOPA-style blackout, nor was it any sort of foul play by upset teachers. The cause was a simple networking glitch with servers in Tampa. As of now, the site should be back up to its fully functioning and fully informative state.

The outage started around 6:30 a.m. PT with a simple error message that the "servers are currently experiencing a technical problem." The site was somewhat navigable, with pages only partly loading and much of the content style and layout being stripped out. Just about an hour later, the site was back to normal.

The Wikipedia status page was aglow with orange and red which notated warnings and service disruptions. As of now, almost every single one is back to green or orange, showing that the site has recovered. The outage is said to be "due to networking issues with servers in Tampa, Florida," but no further information is available.

"We certainly haven't been hit by a denial of service attack." Further contributing to the story of networking issues rather than a bunch of angry teachers teaming up.

Google Chrome is still on top of the browser heap, has over 1/3 of market
It all started with a day. A while back, we reported how Chrome became the top browser in the world for a day. A little later, it managed to stay the top browser for a week. And then it managed a month. And now, it's still on top and is continually increasing its lead over the others. It currently has captured one-third of the market.

StatCounter has the market share of Chrome pegged at 33.8% for July 2012. This figure is up from June's 32.8% and up significantly from July 2011's figure of 22.1%. IE is still putting up quite the fight and still manages to have 32% of the market. Firefox, on the other hand, is losing ground and is down to 23.7%.

Safari has managed to hold steady at around 7.1%. Last month, Chrome managed to become the top browser in Europe and surpassed Firefox for the first time. Chrome has a massive lead in South Africa and Asia, where it is the top browser and has a massive lead. IE still leads the US, UK, and Australia, which is interesting.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 and others to get Ice Cream Sandwich
Samsung UK have confirmed their rollout plans for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) on Galaxy tablets. The first ones to line up to the ICS van is the Galaxy Tab 10.1, with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and Galaxy Tab 8.9 to follow shortly after. TechRader spoke to Samsung UK, who said:

Samsung UK can confirm the roll out of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus WiFi and Galaxy Tab 10.1 WiFi devices is live. Any further updates for the Galaxy Tab range will be announced in due course.

The update looks to only be splashing down on UK tablets at the moment, with the US having to wait a while before ICS arrives. Personally, this is such a bad move by Samsung (and other companies) as well as Google, because it creates a massively fragmented market, with each tablet having a different OS, based on its locale, etc. Apple, are perfect at pushing iOS to their latest generation devices, keeping them [mostly] the same.

Crucial m4 mSATA 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

Crucial's SSD products are in an odd position at this time. The m4 products launched during the first quarter of 2011, around 18 months ago. In SSD years, that's quite some time. To keep up with other manufacturers, Crucial shaved the m4 prices and now the m4 is one of the best-selling SSD series in the world.

Since its first introduction to us in January 2011, the Crucial m4 has actually changed quite a bit. Firmware updates have increased performance while advances in flash technology and higher production has decreased the cost of flash, the most expensive component on the BOM. The result leaves us with a faster product that costs less. Today though, were looking at an entirely new m4, this time in the small mSATA form factor.

mSATA was announced in September of 2009 and it didn't take long for OEMs to make use of the new, tiny form factor. mSATA in part is responsible for many of the new ultrabook designs. Typical notebook SSDs are 9.5mm tall, but some of the new ultrabooks are actually thinner than that.

Today we are looking at the new Crucial m4 SATA III mSATA 256GB SSD. This is the first new SATA III SSD from Crucial in a long time and we're excited to see how it performs.
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New Super Mario Brothers 2 Nintendo 3DS Review

There is no doubt Super Mario brothers as a 2D platform is generally always a triumph as a video game. However, until recently, you either had to pull out the SNES or NES system to get your fix. Nintendo in its wisdom decided it was time to return to the 2D world with Mario and released New Super Mario Brothers on DS. The game turned out to be a smash hit both critically and sales wise with the title still commanding a near full price new even now with the successor machine out. So, it was a no brainer they would go back to the well again. However, this time around, 3D is available to the developers. So what have they done with this extra power? Well not much, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Although it is a sequel, New Super Mario Brothers 2 really tells a story of its own. However, it should come as no surprise that the story very much mimics that of the titles before it. Bowser steals the princess from under Mario's nose, sends his kids to take out Mario and Mario tries to find and save the princess once again. In many ways this cliche storyline represents our misgivings with this game. It seems like Nintendo is afraid to mix up the tried and tested gameplay. It just seems that with every Mario game repeating the same formula, that one day it is going to get stale and mixing up the storyline probably wouldn't take that much away from the Mario experience.

In terms of the gameplay itself again nothing much has changed, but that was to be expected. Mario jumps, hops and runs just as well as ever and the controls feel smooth as butter. Where the game starts to differ from its predecessors is its focus on coins. In Mario games past you have been able to collect coins and once you reached 100, Mario obtained another life. In New Super Mario Brothers 2, the coins are more important and whilst 100 of them still gets another life, it is the competitive nature of the game that is changed by this.

The game keeps a running tally of all the coins you have collected in the entire time you have played it. Through this you can compare coin collection to other gamers via the street pass system however unfortunately there are no online leader boards which considering the system is online, is a missed opportunity. Also it should come as no surprise that the focus on coins impacts other areas of the game. The new powerups are very coin focused.

Those new powerups include the ability to collect a gold flower and coin block head. With the gold flower, instead of shooting regular fireballs, you shoot ones that turn enemies into gold coins. It makes you more likely to seek enemies out rather than avoid them and does offer a nice change of pace. The other new powerup is a coin block head. If you bash a block with coins too long, the block becomes stuck to Mario's head and until you hit an enemy, it stays there. As Mario jumps around, coins fall out of the block for you to collect. This is one of our most loved additions to the series from this game, as the first time you see it, you will want to burst out laughing.

After you complete the game, a coin rush mode is unlocked where you play through levels that are packed to the brim with coins. Instead of having the regular 400 seconds to complete a Mario level, you instead have 100 seconds, so you have to balance the time left versus collecting the bonanza of coins, which are on offer to Mario or Luigi.

With the positives out of the way we have to look at the negatives. First of all whilst the game is a perfect portable title, its length does leave a lot to be desired. It can be finished in one sitting easily, and does not offer a high degree of difficulty. It seems the developers have tried to focus on replay value with the coin rush mode rather the elongate the game. However, there are a number of secrets to find and to get them all does take significantly longer than blasting through the main game.

The biggest problem we find with the game is that it just doesn't feel new enough. It feels like a perfectly competent Mario game, but for a title which is somewhat a lead title for the 3DS XL system launch, we would have liked to see a bit more variety. Whether that is a problem to you is dependent on how much you are bored with the current Mario formula. Chances are you are not and this will not be an issue, but it's a big reason why Mario is not scoring 90% from us this time around.

Visually the game is somewhat impressive, but again we could have expected a bit more for a 3DS system. There is no doubt that the color palette is more in-depth than its DS counterpart, but it would have been nice to see even more fidelity and improvements. One area where they have significantly shined is the 3D. For the first time a Nintendo game is available that doesn't hurt my eyes in full 3D mode and so it is clear that the developers are starting to figure out the best way to use the 3D functions. Sound effects and music are very typical and have all been seen before which falls back to the not much is new pile with this game.

New Super Mario Brothers 2 does a lot right, but a lot of that we have seen before. With a Mario game that has come to be expected, but it's also not entirely unfair to want to see something new or some variety. The additions to the game are interesting, but really, unless you feel you need to play another Mario game, it is not a must play game.

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Available Tags:iPad , Wikipedia , Google , Chrome , Galaxy Tab , Galaxy , Nintendo ,

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 07/08/2012

Introduction

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