Europe and the Far East: Schooling the US with Faster Speeds

A Global Game Download Report by Pando Networks has been released. In it are listed the ranks of countries by their average download speeds.

It lists users in the following countries to be the most successful in completing a game download:

• South Korea: 94%
• Hong Kong: 93%
• Japan: 93%
• Bulgaria: 93%
• Taiwan: 92%
• Denmark: 91%
• Sweden: 91%
• Iceland: 90%
• Latvia: 90%
• Norway: 89% 

 Even Bulgaria is now as competitive as South Korea!

More information is reported with a listing of the average download speeds for the top five countries:

• South Korea: 2,202 KBps (17.62 Mbps)
• Romania: 1,909 (15.27)
• Bulgaria: 1,611 (12.89)
• Lithuania: 1,463 (11.70)
• Latvia: 1,377 (11.02)
• Switzerland: 654 (5.23)
• Germany: 647 (5.18)
• United States: 616 (4.93)
• Great Britain: 599 (4.79)

How much are you paying and how fast is the service? Either way, off to the far East for me!

WARCO: First Person Cameraman

WARCO is a modern war FPS game where the player plays the role of a cameraman instead of the usually front-line infantry soldier.


It is a work in progress being developed by a Brisbane sutdio named Defiant Development. The studio is collaborating with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the shoes of a war-time journalist. The game was originally meant to be a training simulator, but is now turning into something much more interesting.

A political commentary of sorts, it aims to force the player to make moral decisions that will impact life within the game.

"It's about finding the story you want to tell..." -Defiant's Morgan Jaffit.

Watch the trailer to see the action for yourself.

Diablo 3 Beta is a Go!

The Diablo 3 Beta client is now available for many people who have received access to it on their Battle.Net account. If you did not receive it, invites will be floating around really soon.

A fair size of the game is accessable in the beta.

"In the Diablo III closed beta test, participants will be able to fight their way through part of Act I as any of the five hero classes—barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk, and demon hunter—and go head-to-skull against the Skeleton King, taking him on alone or playing cooperatively with other adventurers," 

Blizzard continues to announce,

"They'll also get to meet up with some of the artisans, followers, and other key characters from Sanctuary, and try out the game's skill and crafting systems."

The client is 2.7GB, and available on Windows and Mac.

Copy-Right Troll to Have Property Siezed by US Marshals

Righthaven, a company who's entire business model is based on suing people for supposedly using copyrighted material, mostly in a non-for-profit manner (bloggers, forum posters, etc.), has lost a lawsuit so horribly bad, that it had to pay the lawyers of the Randazza Legal Group almost $35,000 in legal fees.

What makes things interesting, is that Righthaven is yet to pay up. After they had lost and had to pay up, the requested a stay, which the judge refused to grant. It also appealed the case. Now the individuals of the Randazza Legal Group will be requesting an extra $14,000 in additional costs, and another $100,000 in legal fees to combat the appeal.

Righthaven missed their first payment on September 14th, and as a result a "writ of execution" was filed against them. This pretty much entitles the US Marshals to seize all of the properties associated with Righthaven, and sell it off to pay for the fines.

Justice has been served.

Windows 8, Metro, and the Evolution of the Web

A build of windows 8 has been released and is available for download from Microsoft here. The build is targeted towards developers who want to get a head start in developing tools and applications that will work under the new user interface dubbed "metro".

It is easily noticeable that this new interface change is targeted towards tablet and touch devices in general. Microsoft, like many other companies, are following the trend (much to my dismay, I love my tactile feedback).

Many changes follow, including changes to Internet Explorer 10 which will give users the option to use the metro-style to browse the internet in the same theme and style as the rest of the operating system.

Windows 8 will feature an option that allows users to use it using an interface similar to that of windows 7, but with updated and new features for those who dislike the metro interface. The new metro version of Internet explorer will not feature any plugins, or flash. In the event that an object needs a tool to be used, a link will be made to open it in the vanilla style Internet Explorer. This is probably due to Microsoft's wishes to streamline their "metro-explorer" and not have it broken in any way through plugins or strange web objects.

Adobe is also gearing up for the move from flash as seen in many new products by working on a new tool called Adobe Edge. A design suite for making HTML5 content.

As these changes to windows continue to feature tablet-orientated updates,

A guide on installing the build on a virtual machine can be found here.
For those wanting to have a more fluid experience and wish to partition their hard drive and install it there, click here.