In the new PCFormat
July 2010
Program for OVi - Nokia has thrown out all the stops and has helped to deliver the first in a series of guides on programming for the Nokia OVi store. Follow the guide and learn how to make money with a little time and effort.
Demystifying servers: Part 1 - Do servers dream of electronic sheep? Probably not so instead we ask the really important questions like what exactly is a server and what roles do they server in the data centres that cover the globe.
Playing with death - PCF takes a look at the ways in which death in video games has evolved. Has getting killed become an integral part of the gaming experience?
Games!
Previews of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Transformers: War for Cybertron and Civilization V start off this month's line-up. We take a look at Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West, GTA: Episodes From Liberty City, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, Dragon Age: Awakening, Mount and & Blade: Warband and Sol Survivor. We look back at Fallout 2 and take an in-depth look at Mass Effect 2. This month is packed full of gaming goodness.
Wired!
This month's wired line up starts with a supertest of 3D goodies including monitors, projectors and even 3D cameras. We take a look at the Zotac GTX 470 and the new Intel Core i7 930. AMD's R2000 six core Phenom II X6 1055T is put to the test and the Thermaltake Challenger Pro proves to be one of the "coolest" keyboards around. We have three motherboards in this issue including the sexy Rampage III Extreme. If you want to know which audio tools will make you the next David Guetta then check out the "How to become an audio god." All of this is just a taste of what awaits you in the July issue of PCFormat.
The Usual Suspects
We have received a ton of letters and have picked the more interesting ones (of which there were many) to answer this month. The caLANdar is fill of events for you to spend your weekends at and the memes section this month will teach you the ins-and-outs of using Musically Oblivious 8th Grader and Oh My Goodness Cat. Drive Control Corporation has put the cherry on the top by giving away Norton Security products to ten lucky readers.
On Sale Now!
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Space tourist, Ultima creator and former NCsoft employee Richard
Garriott has won his case against the games developer, to the tune of
$28 million (R206 million in our currency). He had instituted the
lawsuit after parting ways with NCsoft. The manner in which he left was
part of the court action as he claimed that he incurred considerable
losses as a result
Dawn of War II’s newest expansion is a Real Time Strategy title. Except
when it’s not. Sometimes it morphs into a click-and-slash action title
and there are times when you would swear that it is a one-man, four-man
MMO raid. Whatever it actually is, it certainly does it all well.
The United States Copyright Office, which reviews the DCMA (Digital
Millennium Copyright Act) every three years, has made several notable
exemptions to the act this year. The exemptions include: bypassing the
CSS (Content Scrambling System) in DVDs in certain circumstances;
unlocking or jailbreaking cellular phones (including the iPhone), the
breaking of DRM in video games under certain circumstances and the
breaking of DRM in e-books in order to enable read-aloud or special
text functionality
As many as 12 000 Steam users recent got an automated message over the
last two weeks, erroneously informing them that they had been detected
cheating in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and had their accounts
banned. Steam has since made this up to owners of accounts that were
incorrectly banned by giving those affected free copies of Left 4 Dead 2
Four of the world’s top overclockers have been banned for life by
XtremeSystems.org and for one year by HWBOT for cheating in the recent
MSI Lords of Overclocking online competition. All were disqualified
from said competition
Steve Gibson, the CEO of Righthaven, is taking on websites that are
illegally reposting content online by emulating patent trolls.
Righthaven is a new company that is buying up copyrights for newspaper
content posted online and then suing any blogs or sites that reproduce
that information illegally, which is apparently proving profitable for
the fledgling group
Blizzard has introduced a global embargo on all StarCraft 2: Wings of
Liberty reviews, a move that is being reported by several sources
online, until after the game launches. According to Blizzard this is
mainly due to Battle.Net which the company would like reviewers to
experience in its entirety before publishing reviews
There appears to be a new DRM (Digital Right Management) scheme on the
horizon, going by the name UltraViolet. Apparently backed by many of
the major players in the film and television industry, the official
site says that it is “designed to let consumers enjoy movies and TV shows without being locked into one specific format”
Yesterday the formation of Silicon Sisters Interactive (SSI) was
announced. A Canada-based gaming company and the brainchild of Brenda
Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes, both of whom have been active
in the gaming industry for some time, Silicon Sisters aims to cater
specifically to female gamers
Pinnacle Technology Holdings Limited (PTH) has made an offer to
purchase 100% of shares in Axis Technology (Pty) Ltd. Pinnacle’s aim is
to merge its solution focused distributor with Axiz which according to
Worgroup MD Doug Woolley will allow Worgroup to expand into new markets
as well as provide Axiz with Workgroups solution expertise
The Asus Crosshair IV Formula is the first motherboard to arrive at the
PCF Ranch based on AMD’s new 890FX chipset. The 890FX is the flagship
of AMD’s 8-series chipsets and like its brethren lacks support for the
AM2+ socket/processors as well as DDR2 memory. AMD has given the 890FX
chipset a total of 38 PCI-E lanes which are split between four PCI-E
x16 slots which will have 8 lanes each, a single PCI-E x4 slot and two
PCI-E x1 slots.
