In a very interesting statement at E3 today, GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi brought us both good and bad news. The good news is that he confirmed that the Polyphony Digital team was focusing nearly all of their efforts on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, working hard to bring us features like vehicular damage, private online races, new tracks, and more cars. Of course, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and he added that these updates could push the full version of Gran Turismo 5 back into 2010. He also confirmed that Gran Turismo Mobile, for the PSP, is still in “active development” but probably not be released until after Gran Turismo 5 (in other words, 2011).
Ben Mezrich is the kind of nonfiction writer we used to call a hype artist. He takes relatively mundane subjects — counting cards in Vegas, derivatives trading, the New York Mercantile Exchange — and turns them into high-octane page-turners, replete with sex, skullduggery and plot twists worthy of James Patterson.
His protagonists — invariably young, testosterone-fueled men — are real, and he bases his books on true-life events, but he amps those events up to the point where the final product is an indistinguishable blend of fact and fiction. “In some instances,” he writes in a typical Ben Mezrich author’s note, “details of settings and descriptions have been changed or imagined.” The phrase “never let the facts get in the way of a good story” could have been coined to describe Mr. Mezrich’s approach.
His most recent book is “The Accidental Billionaires,” which he describes on his Web site as “the high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.” The two Ivy Leaguers are Mark Zuckerberg — widely hailed as the 26-year-old billionaire founder of Facebook — and Eduardo Saverin, his former Harvard classmate and Facebook co-founder, who originally owned 30 percent. The book is told through the prism of both Mr. Saverin and two other Harvard graduates, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, all of whom believe that Mr. Zuckerberg deprived them of their rightful share of Facebook’s billions. “The Accidental Billionaires” also serves as the foundational document for the new movie “The Social Network.” Written by Aaron Sorkin, the creator of “The West Wing,” it is a brilliant film, possibly the finest movie about business ever made. (Sorry, Oliver Stone.) Although people associated with the film insist that Mr. Sorkin did his own research — and although his take on Facebook is far more sophisticated than Mr. Mezrich’s — he nonetheless aligns his script in most important ways with the facts as they’re presented by Mr. Mezrich. (Mr. Sorkin and I were unable to connect before my deadline.)
Mr. Saverin is by far the most sympathetic character in the movie. Mr. Zuckerberg is presented as an arrogant, aloof, socially inept computer nerd, who eventually tricks Mr. Saverin into signing documents that diminish his stake in Facebook to near-nothingness. Lots of dramatic license is taken, inevitable in a two-hour movie that spans a number of years.
All of which flies in the face of yet a third account of the origins of Facebook. “The Facebook Effect” is a book by an old Fortune magazine colleague of mine, David Kirkpatrick, written with the full cooperation of Mr. Zuckerberg, and published in June. Mr. Kirkpatrick, a business journalist of the old school, would never take the kind of dramatic liberties taken by Mr. Mezrich and Mr. Sorkin. In fact, they horrify him.
So Mr. Kirkpatrick has been waging a kind of war against “The Social Network,” decrying it in speeches, and in columns in The Daily Beast and elsewhere. “A lot of people come out of the movie believing they have seen the true take,” he complained to me the other day. He added, “It is testimony to the power of Hollywood and a well-crafted movie. It is disturbing.”
For his part, Mr. Kirkpatrick believes that Mr. Zuckerberg is a visionary, who started Facebook — at 19! — out of a “truly intellectual motivation about an impactful new form of communication.” Late in his book, he approvingly quotes Mr. Zuckerberg as saying that he built Facebook to create something “that actually makes a really big change in the world.”
Well, maybe. But after seeing “The Social Network” and reading the two books, I couldn’t help wondering whether Mr. Kirkpatrick, for all his emphasis on “the facts,” had really gotten any closer to the truth about Facebook’s beginnings than Mr. Mezrich and Mr. Sorkin. I have my doubts.
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At bottom, “The Social Network” is a movie about obsession. That is a large part of the reason I’m so smitten with it: that same obsession that caused Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard to start Microsoft, that drove Steve Jobs to build the first home computer in a garage, that motivated Marc Andreessen to create the first commercial browser while still in school — that’s the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook too, at least in Mr. Sorkin’s telling. And that obsessional quality is what Mr. Sorkin has captured better than anyone before.
Though Mr. Zuckerberg starts Facebook while still taking a full course load at Harvard, he spends most of his waking hours on his new company, not his schoolwork. He can’t help himself. Realizing he needs to be in Silicon Valley, he moves there during summer vacation — and then drops out because Facebook has become far more important than graduating from Harvard.
When you think of Japanese drifting cars, you think of souped up sports cars twisting along narrow roads. At one Japanese practice track, a modified mini cab/multi-cab in Philippines , a type of micro truck or van is drifting in way that would make drift king Keiichi Tsuchiyama proud.
*See my video compilation for Mini-Cab/Multi-cab joining sports car on performing Drifting...
*Don't you ever dare the Power of small engine cars...:-)
Nintendo Japan has just released the technical details of its upcoming 3DS portable gaming system, which will feature three-dimensional graphics, multitasking, and web browsing capability.
Seven months after Nintendo announced the development of a portable 3D gaming console on which "games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for special glasses", the gaming giant has just released more detailed specifications on its blog.
The device will measure 134mm x 74mm x 21mm, just slightly longer and wider -but thinner- than the Nintendo DS Lite.
According to gaming website IGN.com, the Nintendo 3DS will feature three 0.3 megapixel cameras, one on the inside and two on the outside. The two outside cameras will enable users to take 3D pictures that can be viewed on the spot.
Also, the traditional input buttons are now complemented by a "Circle Pad" for 360-degree analogue input. The device will also feature a motion sensor and a gyroscopic sensor in addition to the touch screen.
The Nintendo 3DS will also be capable of multitasking and web browsing, so users can surf the Internet even in mid-game. The console will be backwards compatible, capable of playing DSi and DS games.
The Nintendo 3DS is set to launch in Japan in February 2011, with an estimated price of Y25,000 (about PhP13,000). Pricing and launch dates for other countries have not yet been announced.
We all know that imagination has no limits. If you can imagine of something great, you can very well achieve it too. Intelligence is something that has led the human civilization to grow proudly and continuously (at least in the field of technology). When this growth is about the human intelligence spent on producing the weapons of mass destruction, all “sane beings” encounter a similar negative feeling. But, who knows, may be ‘War’ isn’t the answer to all the problems in future.
Here are the clippings of some of the most powerful and meticulously crafted weapons ever disclosed to the public: Invisible Tank (British Technology)
Philippines hostage crisis exposes police corruption, ineptitude In wake of a Philippines hostage crisis that left 9 people dead, lawmakers have called for the resignation of Manila’s police commander, the chief of the National Capital Region police, and the head of the SWAT force.
***The Weapons and Tactics used by the SWAT Force during the Hostage Crisis:
Stay Protected Without Using An Anti-Virus Program in your Computer
From a very long time i wanted to share with you the fact behind our over dependence on anti-virus, anti-malware programs. It is one of the reasons why malware continues to disease the computer world. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware, most rootkits, and other malicious and unwanted software.
From a very long time i wanted to share with you the fact behind our over dependence on anti-virus, anti-malware programs. It is one of the reasons why malware continues to disease the computer world. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware, most rootkits, and other malicious and unwanted software.
Everyday hundreds, if not thousands of new malware are created intentionally. Anti-virus programs are constantly upgrading their virus signatures to protect their users from the latest infections. And the average user is convinced that the computer system is now protected with the newly updatedanti-virus . They are totally unaware of something called ‘Zero Day viruses’ who exist like space black holes are wandering somewhere invisibly in the cyber space and attack the victim without the victim’s knowledge. A Zero day virus is a previously-unknown computer virus or other malware for which specific anti-virus software signatures are not yet available.
Nowadays there are anti-viruses that are designed and structured to protect the system from zero day attacks too. But, again they come at a price. Not every body prefer spending money on buyinganti-virus products.
Now, i am sharing a tutorial to you that will help you keep your system fully protected, including from zero day viruses without any “realtime”anti-virus protection for FREE.
* Malwarebytes (This program “will not” run in your memory and automatically protect the system, but you can use it to scan directories and files for infections)
Points to Remember before we start:
* Use this method for experimental purpose. If you are not comfortable implementing it then stop using this method right away and use ananti-virus program to stay safe.
* Take responsibility for websites you visit, links you click on and things you download, if you wish to stay safe.
* No virus can harm your system unless it is executed and running.
* This article has nothing to do with using a firewall. If your computer is connected to any network like the internet itself, then it it’s 100% important to use a firewall.
* Smarter techniques always require some effort for implementation.
* Use Malwarebytes freeware as it does not run in the background thus saving your resources and use it to scan new media like USB drives, CDs, DVDs, e.t.c
* Skills required to understand and implement this guide: Intermediate to Experienced user.
* This tutorial is suitable only for Windows Operating Systems: Windows XP and later.
* This tutorial will teach you to set up your computer to “not use anti-virus protection is background” and in such a way that you run applications, whether infected or not, in a safe and fake environment and whenever your end up executing a infected program, you can easily stop and reverse the actions of the program with just closing it. Benefits of implementing this method:
* You won’t have to buy anti-virus, anti-malware programs.
* Your computer would be much safer than what you would get with the anti-malware programs.
* Your computer will run faster as more RAM will be available without the anti-virus running in the background.
The Tutorial:
* Perform a re-installation of windows or if not, you can still continue using the same windows setup, though i recommend a re-installation to stay clean.
* Now that your system is ready, install the freeware Malwarebytes program, update the malware definitions and perform a full system scan.
* Install Sandboxie. To know how Sandboxie works, click here to read the article on it. Now you can safely run all your programs infected or not infected in this way:
Watch the video demonstration of Sandboxie:
Run any program of your choice inside Sandboxie. Lets consider running an internet browser, since majority of the malware spread through the internet.
Even if you are surfing a malicious website that intends to infect your computer, you can easily ignore each downloaded file from bring copied to your “real system”. As soon as any file is downloaded into the “fake browsing environment” you will be asked for a path to recover the downloaded file, in case that file is important for you. If not important, select ‘Don’t prompt again…’ and close the recovery box. Any file downloaded from this browsing session will be simply deleted from the “fake environment”.
* That is all to it!
Primarily, this article has a lot to cover and adding more factors and situations will make this article more lengthy and uncomfortable to read. This article might also be difficult to understand for some. If you have any questions about any part of this article, please drop in a comment. I will be happy to help you.
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