This blog is created due to school task given by my treacherous teacher, mr IB'handsome'Gunantha Wira..
this blog talk about everything that i found unique and helpfull
so if you find this blog awesome, please subscribe :)
For those of you who still newbie
in the virtual world, must be wondering right? What is Torrent? Well ... here
will be discussed what torrent is and how to download using torrent.
Consider the following
illustration! Perhaps you yourself have experienced this situation
<imagination mode :ON>
One day, you want download DVD
movies (or whatever ....) on the internet. Then you search on Google. There
appears sentences like this:
Then you download. But you
surprised that the size of the file that you downloaded is really small! with
.torrent extension on it.When you try to open the folder it wont open, when you
try to extract it the extraction failed,but when you try to bazooka-bombing the
computer what will happen?do you know the answer?Yeah, correct! your PC will be
utterly, totally torn into small pieces of carbon. Congratulation! you have
succesfully destroyed your computer.
HUAHUAHAUHUAHUA
</imagination>
Okay, back to topic.
So the file that you cant open nor
extract called torrent file.Torrent file is NOT the original file, bit it just
a small file whose contains information where youll get the original one.
How to get original file?
First you need to download the
torrent client program, for example, the popular BitTorrent or μTorrent (on
this tutorial i will use BitTorrent).But over time, there is already a browser that
support for torrent files! For example, Opera. So for those of you who use
Opera, you dont need to download the torrent client program! If you use this browser, you can directly download the
original file.
Then you open the .torrent file into your torrent software. Usually,
this is as simple as a a double-click on the .torrent file icon, and the client
software auto-launches. In other cases, this software will even open the
torrent file for you.
The torrent client software will now talk to a tracker server for 2 to 10
minutes, while it scours the Internet for people to swarm with. Specifically,
the client and tracker server will search for other users who have the same
exact .torrent file as you.
As the tracker locates torrent users to swarm with, each user will be
automatically labeled as either a “leech/peer” or as a “seed” (users
who have only part of the target file, versus users who have the complete
target file). As you might guess, the more seeds you connect to, the faster
your download will be. Commonly, 10 peers/leeches and 3 seeders is a good swarm
for downloading a single song/movie.
The client software then begins the transfer. As the name
“sharing” implies, every transfer will happen in both directions, “down” and
“up” (leech and share). *SPEED EXPECTATION: Cable and DSL modem users can expect an average
of 25 megabytes per hour, sometimes slower if the swarm is small with less than
2 seeders. On a good day with a big swarm, however, you can download a 5MB song
within 3 minutes, and a 900MB movie within 60 minutes.
Once the transfer is complete, leave your torrent client software running
for at least two hours. This is called "seeding" or
"good karma", where you share your complete files to other users. Suggestion: do your downloads just before you go to sleep at night. This
way, you will seed your complete files, you will increase your upload/download
ratio, and you will have complete downloaded files by the time you wake up!
Howdy pal? hows yer doin? this time im gonna post about our bloved windows new product, windows 8!
Reviewing an operating system is an odd endeavor isnt it? people don’t really use operating systems; they use applications. The OS should be as transparent as possible, acting as a platform for applications. In today’s cloud-driven world, however, the notion that your application will run in a single OS is tenuous at best. Toss in the increasing use of smart devices, whether phones or tablets, and the idea of a single-platform operating system is less relevant now than it was just a few years ago. These days we have “ecosystems”—Microsoft, Apple, or Google, take your pick.
That said, PC users still expect their Windows applications to run as before, and they want to have the same control over their laptop and desktop computers as they’ve always had. New software features should enable users to do more. And as the reaction to the late, unlamented Windows Vista illustrated, all the shiny new bells and whistles should not harm performance or require new hardware.
Can Windows 8 meet its goal of being one aspect of a new Microsoft ecosystem while maintaining its roots in the PC? Can existing computers run Windows 8 without the need for expensive new touch displays? Will the revamped Windows 8 user interface turn off existing Windows users or pull them into the ecosystem? I’ll try to answer those questions and others as I dive deeply into Windows 8.
This review is based on the Windows 8 final release—what Microsoft calls the “release to manufacturing,” or RTM, version. The final release is available to Microsoft TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Desktop PCs, laptops, and tablets ship with Windows 8 preinstalled on the official launch day, October 26.
We ran Windows 8 on a moderately high-end desktop system along with a standard (nontouch) monitor, mouse, and keyboard. We also used a Samsung Series 9 laptop with an Elan touchpad supporting full multitouch gestures.
The Windows 8 user interface
Windows 8 tries to get you to tie your Windows login to your Microsoft account; it’s optional, but if you do link the two, the Windows login and password serve as your Microsoft account login and password. Enabling this link allows tighter integration with the remote and cloud-based features of the new OS.
As mentioned previously, Windows 8 is designed to be part of an ecosystem, alongside Windows Phone and Windows RT. Microsoft believes in this idea so strongly that it has made the Windows 8 user interface (formerly called Metro) the primary interface for Windows users. PCs with the new OS installed will boot into the Windows 8 interface; the OS offers no built-in way to set it to boot to the traditional Windows desktop.
The Windows 8 interface acts as the Start menu now. Instead of appearing as columns of small icons that pop up when you click the Start button, all your applications show up as tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen. You can also search for an application by typing its name when you’re in the Start screen; the results list autosorts as you type more characters.
All applications show up as tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen.
It’s important to realize that the Start screen is no more Windows 8 than the Start menu was Windows 7 or Windows XP. The screen exists as a launchpad for applications, not as a desktop replacement. That concept is easy to forget, since the Start screen occupies the entire display. Even so, Windows 8 apps consume the entire screen, whereas desktop applications can still run in a window on the desktop.
However, not all desktop applications appear on the Start screen by default. Some accessory apps, such as Paint, live in the Apps screen. You can force these programs to appear in the Start screen by right-clicking them to select them and then clicking Pin to Start at the bottom of the screen. Nevertheless, getting to the Apps screen is simple: Right-click a blank area in the Start screen and then click the All apps icon at the lower right.
This is where you’ll run into a fundamental change in how you interact with Windows. Previously, right-clicking an object on the desktop always brought up a context menu, giving you a choice of actions to take. In the Windows 8 interface (but not the desktop), right-clicking now produces a bar at the bottom of the screen containing assorted context-sensitive items. It’s a jarring change, but the arrangement makes sense within the context (no pun intended) of a touch-based display such as a tablet’s. (Context-clicking still works the same way when you’re in the Windows desktop.)
Live tiles are among the key features of the Windows 8 Start screen. While normal (non-live) tiles measure 150 by 150 pixels, most live tiles are double-wide (310 by 150 pixels) and display dynamic information. The People tile, for instance, shows you tweets and Facebook posts from your feeds, assuming that you’ve set them up. As you install apps from the Microsoft Store, more dynamic tiles may appear. Live tiles first appeared in a broad fashion in Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 updates, but will exist across all Microsoft platforms going forward.
Navigating the Start screen is easy. If you’re using a mouse with a wheel, moving the wheel scrolls left and right. If you’re using a touchpad, swiping left and right (with one finger) scrolls the tile list. You can drag individual tiles to any location.
Navigating the desktop
Microsoft now partitions applications into “Windows 8” apps (formerly known as “Metro” apps) and desktop applications. The latter are those programs we all know and love from previous versions of Windows, including Microsoft Office.
You cannot boot directly into the desktop, since Microsoft wants the Start screen to be users’ initial experience with Windows 8. For most people, this restriction may not be an issue, but certain vertical applications (specialized programs, such as those for point-of-sale PCs) need to boot directly into a desktop environment. Until Windows 8 versions of such programs become available, users requiring vertical applications should stick with earlier versions of Windows.
If all you need to do is launch an application, you can simply click its tile in the Start screen. If you need robust file management and navigation features, you have to access the desktop. After you boot the machine, pressing the Windows key sends you to the desktop. Unfortunately, the Windows key isn’t consistent in this behavior: If you’re in an app, pressing the Windows key always returns you to the Start screen. Press it again, and you’re in the most recent Windows 8 app. Instead, to move to the desktop consistently, you need to be in the habit of pressing Windows-D. Another option is to move the pointer to the lower left of the screen and click there (though this method works only if you have used no other app recently).
The desktop offers familiar shortcuts and pinned icons.
Except for the omission of a Start menu, the desktop mostly behaves the same in Windows 8 as it did in Windows 7. So how do you reach commonly used features such as the Control Panel, the file explorer, and the Run command? Move your pointer to the lower-left corner and right-click, ignoring the Start-screen peek that pops up. This is the simplified Start menu; you can also bring it up by pressing Windows-X. Or you might prefer to use the search function, entering “Control Panel” or “Run” as the search terms.
Microsoft has chosen to leave the Windows 8 desktop bare, as it did with Windows 7. Given the absence of the old-style Start menu, you may wish to add the system and user-file icons by right-clicking the desktop and selecting the Personalize menu. After you have added those two icons, you can pin them to the Windows 8 Start screen.
Connecting to networks is easier than ever, once you have installed the right drivers. Windows 8 enumerates and displays all of your networked devices—including DLNA devices, network folders you’ve set up, and other computers residing on the network—in any file manager window.
The appearance of individual windows has changed. Gone are the faux transparency and the fake beveled edges, replaced by a completely flat appearance. If you click one of the menu items (such as ‘File’), each window will show a Ribbon similar to the Office 2010 Ribbon. (The Ribbon isn’t sticky, though; it shows up only when you click one of the top-menu items.) The Ribbon contains, in one location, all the information that previous versions displayed in a series of menus and submenus.
Ultimately, navigating the new desktop is similar to getting around the old version, but the absence of a full Start menu may throw you off at first. Using hotkeys, and customizing the desktop and Start screen, might help you become more comfortable in the short run. Once you get used to navigating the system, it’s as transparent as the old one—just different.
gimana blog saya pak? keren kan? orisinil kan? hohoho
actually this is my first original post..(hohoho lagi deh...)
well, konsep saya dalam membuat blog ini adalah menampilkan segala jenis hal yang saya anggap menarik, dari science,nature bahkan hingga hal-hal yang berhubungan dengan game.Namun karena waktu pengumpulan yang relatif singkat,yang notabene adalah tanggal 5 desember, jadi saya putuskan dulu untuk menunda grand-mega-ultimate-blogging-project tersebut, dan memutuskan untuk mencopas artikel artikel bermutu di internet. maksud saya gini pak, jadi postingan-postingan sebelum ini artikel ini saya copas dulu dari internet (biar keliatan rame geetoh), namun untuk kedepannya, postingan postingan saya itu 100% original... hohohohohoho
Mungkin bapak bertanya,"kok artikel-artikel kamu bahasa inggris sih, bapak kan nggak ngerti? pasti kamu membuat hal hal aneh tentang bapak ya?!!! HGTRVTY%@#E$&#$TB@#G@@!!!!"
hohoho sabar pak... saya tau kok bapak nggak bisa bahasa inggris :D(no offense, bercanda paaak), saya membuat artikel dalam bahasa inggris karena saya ingin agar blog ini dapat 'dinikmati' oleh seluruh orang dari seluruh belahan dunia, sehingga saya dapat mendominasi pasar global dunia dan langkah saya untuk menjadi absolute ruler of the world semakin mudah... yang ini saya nggak bercanda pak *evil smirk*
Mungkin sekarang bapak sudah bertanya lagi,"lah, katanya bahasa inggris, kok postingan ini bahasa Indonesia? bapak kan udah pake google translate? kamu meremehkan bapak ya?!!! HGTRVTY%@#E$&#$TB@#G@@!!!!"
zzzzzz... ampun deh pak -___-
oke pak segitu dulu curhatan saya.. sering sering main ke sini ya paaak ;D
Satu lagi pak, selamat hari guru yaww, semoga bapak tambah ganteng, pinter, murah rejeki, murah jodoh dan bisa bahasa inggris... hohohohohohohohohohoho.
-P B D-
PS: semua lawakan disini adalah tidak nyata dan fictional, guyonan disini adalah semata mata untuk membuat blog ini tidak garing, kata kata yang menusuk hati agar dimaafkan
PPS: jangan turunin nilai saya paak... ampuuun
PPPS :Oiya, menurut saya, bapak itu mirip kayak orang yang main tikus-tikus mondok di timezone... setiap ada tikus yang muncul, bapak getok deh.. nggak ngerti maksud kalimat ini pak? PM me okay?!
Space is not smooth: physicists think that on the quantum scale, it is composed of indivisible subunits, like the dots that make up a pointillist painting. This pixellated landscape is thought to seethe with black holes smaller than one trillionth of one trillionth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom, continuously popping in and out of existence.
That tumultuous vista was proposed decades ago by theorists struggling to marry quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — the only one of nature’s four fundamental forces not to have been incorporated into the standard model of particle physics. If it is true, the idea could provide a deeper understanding of space-time and the birth of the Universe.
Strapping yourself back on the Animus to relive the memories is one way to spend your time, but if you're expecting the ride to be one wholly good then you might be in for a disappointment. Assassin's Creed III keeps the story of our modern-day Assassin, Desmond Miles, going forward to the inevitable conclusion that players will reach at the game's end. This final stretch, however, brings along many technical problems, pacing issues, and a lack of focus leaving the game unpolished. Even so, the game is ultimately an enjoyable experience overall with a few gems that truly shine bright.
As Desmond et al finally arrive at the site where Those Who Came Before have been guiding him ever since Assassin's Creed II they come to the realization a key is needed in order to activate the mysterious complex which will save the human race from a solar flare. Juno, who inhabits the walls of said complex, forces Desmond to visit the memories of another ancestor in order to find the key. What starts out as a simple problem that must be overcome quickly escalates into a web of conspiracy during the times of the American Revolution. The idea is fairly solid and while a simple revelation of where the key would suffice, Desmond must unravel the mysterious tale of his ancestors Connor and Haytham Kenway.
In addition to ACIII's narrative pacing problem, the game has an extremely lackluster protagonist. While Haytham is charming, charismatic, and cool Connor is completely devoid of personality. Simply put, he's idealism manifested in human form. Connor's naivete knows no bounds and throughout the entirety of the game he fails to have any distinct characteristics that stands out. Often times he's so busy being someone's lapdog it's hard to find out why you're even playing as him. The way Connor speaks is just as disappointing as it hardly feels like there's anything passionate or emotional in his dialogues leaving him feeling like a robot at times.
However, that's not the only problem that Connor has. While Connor does have the abilities to back up his Assassin pedigree, he fails to intelligently analyze situations. He constantly does things as he pleases without heeding the words of his master, Achilles. This places Connor in a variety of tight situations forcing the game's story to take a certain direction, although it could be avoided entirely. In the end, you end up partaking in missions that have no importance at all to the grand scheme of things. Speaking of no importance, many of the crucial events during the American Revolution make appearances in the game but none of them feel like they matter. It's almost as if the developers threw darts at a wall full of events from the Revolution and decided to stick Connor in them. The game fails to keep the historical and fiction aspect of the story in a cohesive manner.
The overall story also takes a hit as AC3 tries to juggle many plot threads but does so poorly. The focus of the game's narrative leaves you scratching your head wondering what exactly you're fighting for. Is it to kill the Templars? To protect your village? Assist the British? The colonists? It's hard to know where exactly the game wanted to go and it clearly shows. The jumbled mess simply feels like a means to an end - getting Desmond the key.
While the story is poorly executed and not thought out, the gameplay delivers for the most part. Combat, being one of the pinnacle aspects of the series, has undergone a major revamp changing how one executes his moves on a poor soul. Rather than having an offensive and defensive stance the previous games utilized, AC3 combines the two streamlining it. The defensive actions are all relegated to one button allowing you to counter and parry attacks while the remaining face buttons act as your offensive or tactical assets. It's an interesting setup one that tries to keep things simple while maintaining the fun of fighting enemies. If you're familiar with the Batman: Arkham series then you will be right at home. Countering takes only a simple button press and the animation that follows is a joy to watch, and trust me there are a ton of kill animations to enjoy.
Sadly the trade off in the new combat system is the relative ease in skirmishes. Rather than going on the offensive it's extremely easy to just wait until your opponents attack and simply counter them to death followed by a series of combo kills. It's disappointing that fights can boil down to a matter of mechanical abuse, and while this is mostly up to the player, you can't help but feel that it was poorly designed from the get go. The abuse doesn't end just there as you can throw enemies at each other until they fall down. Then you can subsequently kill them at your leisure.
Roaming through town streets, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and just traversing a variety of levels is a trademark to the franchise. AC3 is no different in this aspect considering it forces Connor to move a ton whether it be by foot or on a horse. Oddly enough you'll find yourself on a horse as much as you would traveling around on foot. Myriads of problems make it easier to maneuver Connor around in cities using a horse. One such problem is the janky controls when running around. Instead of using a combination of two buttons to jump, run, and perform other acrobatic feats AC3 uses a simple touch of the shoulder buttons. This allows Connor to do everything pervious Assassins could in the past games. While this may seem like a good change it isn't the case at all. Often times Connor will end up climbing things that you don't want to or jump on top of things that should be ignored. Due to the running and climbing feature all being tasked to one button and the way Connor will interact with any object he is in range of, there are a lot of frustrating situations where you wish you could control him differently.
Another problem that arises from traveling on foot is due to the layout of the town and the overall level design of various areas in the game. The buildings in both Boston and New York are so far apart from each other that it feels very inefficient getting around town using rooftops. As a result running around through streets and pushing people out of the way or using a horse is the best way to get from place to place. The buildings also pose a problem as many of them are laid out in a way that it's annoying to run away from pursuing foes. The layout just isn't as clever or as useful as the previous games making it feel like the game is often times working against you.
Lastly, there are a ton of technical problems such as clipping, framerate drops, and other bugs that makes travelling around town a detrimental experience. While it doesn't occur often there were numerous instances where I phased through an entire building, got stuck on the ground, and had invisible walls blocking my way. It was both annoying and put me in situations where I had to fight though I desired to run away. The framerate seems to drop consistently where there are a lot of objects and details that draws on the console's power. It's understandable considering the game's graphical prowess. However, it's annoying when a solid 30 FPS dips to an erratic back and forth of 15 to 25 FPS. While I don't have motion sickness, it did make my head a tad doozy.
The missions that Connor partakes in is arguably the best and worst part of the game. Most of them have simple main objectives but have optional ones that ramp up the challenge a bit. It's a nice touch and I'm glad that it's one of the few features that transitioned over from the previous titles. Whether it be an assassination missions, freeing hostages, or stalking a contact they all stand out to be quite the joy. Almost frustratingly so, some missions have aspects that are absolutely criminal. Stealth isn't handled extremely well in the game at all and it'll take clever positioning to silence enemies or follow someone.
Welcome to the Frontier! It's an extremely huge zone abundant with wildlife, trees, and other mysteries hidden in its green - or white depending on what season you're in. This zone serves as a primary hub for traveling to major locations but also a way to distract yourself. While traveling in the wild there are a variety of quests you can undertake whether it be hunting animals, navigating through various trees to find stunning vistas, or just checking off the things on your list of extras to do. It's no exaggeration when I say that there truly is a multitude of things to do and while the extras may seem repetitive at times, the types that you'll encounter mix things up quite a bit never leaving you bored.
Hunting is one of the newest features in AC3 and let me tell you that it is no easy feat. Every once in a while you'll find some clue that'll lead you to where a game is at. By tracking these games you can collect the material from killing them which in turn leads to a lot of money. While tracking them is relatively easy, actually catching/killing one is another beast in and of itself. By cleverly positioning yourself in bushes or raining death from treetops, you'll find success - patience is also needed. This is mostly for the larger animals though and the little ones will take a measly arrow or a gunshot to do the job. Hunting is a cool idea in concept but sadly fails to be anything more than just doing the motions to earn money. There isn't any real reward from killing animals and the steps becomes old quite quickly. Although the magic of hunting does wear off, it's an interesting system built to keep players busy in the Frontier.
The Frontier is huge as I mentioned but feels unnecessarily so. While there are many things to do in it, a smaller sandbox would've sufficed. It would allow ease of navigation, a focus on intricate traveling methods using treetops, and more monumental landmarks. Even so, the Frontier is by no means a horrible place. It's quite a marvel and the amount of lush greenery around you is absolutely baffling. Combo this in with the great graphical presentation and you have a recipe for something amazing.
Speaking of amazing, AC3 features ships that you can control and take out to combat. It sounds horrible at first but once you give it a go it's truly quite a marvel. While the system isn't intricate considering you only have three designated speeds to maneuver your hunk of wood, the game manages to make best of what's there. Moving around in water is extremely fun with the various wind speed and directions affecting your ship keeping you always on your toes since you can't afford to hit any obstacles such as rocks. Try to manage moving your ship then with enemies that are firing upon you. Positioning is key when winning a naval battle and AC3 takes this to heart. By controlling the speed of your ship to put yourself in an optimal position you're able to blast enemy ships with a single volley of cannon balls. It's extremely thrilling and it disappoints me that there isn't a race or a deathmatch of naval combat for multiplayer.
Of course, when not being a badass Assassin from the past, Desmond dons his hoodie to become a modern-day badass. In between certain sequences, Desmond will have to retrieve power sources that will keep the complex in working condition. While these segments are extremely short they offer some fresh breath of air. Rather than being bogged down to a location from the olden days, you're exploring more modern architecture and experiencing the modern-day threat of the Templars. Although the gameplay segments feel no different from something that Desmond's ancestors did, the new coat of paint is nice and gives a fresh take on how an Assassin in the present would go about handling missions.
In an effort to also flesh out Abstergo and the conflict between the Templars and Assassins, the Desmond missions act as a catalyst of sorts to wrap up pre-existing conflicts while introducing new ones. Unfortunately, just like the rest of the game, the execution isn't there. The new character Daniel Cross appears out of nowhere, gets a negligible amount of exposition, and is simply left out in the dust. Also it appears that the conflict between the two groups is trivialized by the conversations with Those Who Came Before essentially making the entire narrative of the franchise pointless. The narrative elements of the modern-day world certainly had some charm and mystery in the previous games but how it unravels in the trilogy's conclusion is a major disappointment.
Multiplayer makes a triumphant return and while there isn't anything new that will completely reshape the formula, it still remains to be entertaining. There are numerous modes to be had but they all essentially adhere to the core idea of identifying the enemy and assassinating him. It's simple but actually assassinating someone is rather difficult because often times you're a target of an assassination as well. This means you must blend yourself in a crowd of NPCs in a map so that you aren't noticed while maintaining a lookout for your target. This game of a circular cat and mouse is something unique to the franchise and for an industry ridden with first-person shooters, it's refreshing. The modes will change up how you approach your assassinations or add new mechanics - or remove them. For instance you might have a compass that will help you to find your targets rather easily in Wanted but have it removed in Quick Deathmatch. All in all, the modes are all fun and will keep you busy for a long while.
Assassin's Creed III is ultimately a good game bogged down by the failure to execute great ideas properly. While the need for change in order to improve gameplay is understandable, changes that fail to address the problems it has had keeps the game from reaching greatness. This doesn't mean that the game doesn't deliver in what it attempts to do, however. If you're looking for the same formula found in the previous games then you'll find it here but for something revolutionary, or even evolutionary, look elsewhere.
To call Pokemon a runaway success would be a slight understatement. To call it an absolute titan in the gaming world, and an absolute showpiece of what the gaming world can accomplish over the space of fifteen years would be more realistic, but still would miss the overall picture. What Pokemon is, in fact, is a generation. If you were to ask any child or teenager of the past fifteen years what video game he or she has played and consistently enjoyed and grown up with throughout the course of their life, the answer would most likely be one or multiple of the installments in the franchise. Pokemon is much more a household product than a gaming experience these days, and in 2012 said product returned with its latest installment, Pokemon Black and White Version 2.
Pokemon Black And White 2 have been released in Japan and are currently awaiting an October release date in the UK and USA, and has enjoyed good sales since release, and great reviews.
In an unprecedented move, Game Freak decided to release a direct sequel to Pokemon Black and White, which has already revolutionized the series, and proved that Pokemon is still the number one gaming franchise out there, no matter how many Call Of Duty or Diablo games are released. Everyone played the first two, and many people thoroughly enjoyed them. But the first question that must be answered is this- was a sequel really necessary? What could realistically be added to the games to keep it feeling fresh despite the fact that the Unova region has already been explored to death in the first installments.
The answer would be a resounding yes, it is necessary, and Pokemon Black and White prove exactly how a sequel should be done. Sequels should build upon and improve their predecessor, and this is exactly what Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 accomplish. Though the plot is nothing entirely new, it remains fun and very much enjoyable, and builds on that of the first games. Team Plasma is divided, but from the ashes new characters arrive, such as the mysterious Akuroma. To thoroughly enjoy and understand the plot of the sequels, one must first experience the originals, but the game ensures that any new comers will not be disappointed either, by keeping the story simple, so that the new comer need not worry about missing plot details.
The sound for this game truly is a step up, and brings the sound in Pokemon games into their own category full stop within the gaming world, topping even the elite sound tracks such as Final Fantasy. Pokemon Black 2 contains some truly incredible pieces of music, and much of it is completely fresh. There are even some songs on here with actual words to them, although very simple and not very detailed. This really would be one of the finer points of Black And White 2, as the sound has always been a problem with the Pokemon games that has finally been remedied. It is a shame it took Game Freak so long to catch on, but they have corrected one of the major errors with the Pokemon games.
The graphics on this game are the Holy Grail of all DS games. There is not a Nintendo DS game out there that can hope to top Pokemon Black and White 2 in the graphical department, with detailed sprites, killer 3D cut scenes, and some ingeniously painted created environments, that ensure the game world the player travels through is as enjoyable and immersive as can be found in a gaming experience. This was another issue that had needed an address, and was partially responded to with the shift in view point on Black And White 1, but has finally been fully corrected.
Game Play wise, this is pure gold. There is neither as addictive nor as thrilling a game on a handheld console that has been released today. This is perfection incarnate, where every progression throughout the game brings new elements and ensures the game feels as enjoyable as the first Pokemon games did more than a decade and a half ago now. This is how a handheld game should be made, with real care and time put into it. The formula of the game is completely unchanged, you capture monsters and use them to battle one another, but it is done even better than before, with nice new elements added.
The Gym Leaders are even more interesting than before, with the usual rock, paper, scissors elements found in every Pokemon game present here and in perfect working order. If a formula isn't broke, then there is no need to fix it, and Pokemon may as well be the poster child for this phrase. Pokemon has always had a fun but shallow battle system, and here it is found better than ever, with the usual host of attacks to use on your opponents Pokemon. This is the most fun I can honestly think of having in any game made in a long, long time, and straight away warrants an immediate purchase.
The most notable thing I could find from this game was how the ante had been upped in terms of triple and rotational battles, two new battle styles that were introduced in the games previous to these. Throughout Pokemon Black and White 1, there was around 5 triple and rotational battles to engage in, and I honestly felt that this was really undermining the new game mechanics. However, this has been fixed in the new versions, where the player can engage in triple and rotational battles fairly regularly, which was nice to see.
The multiplayer on this game is, as usual, flawless. Pokemon has always had a fun, deep multiplayer experience that just adds to the plethora of fun, interesting things to do inside the game, and Pokemon Black and White 1 managed to hone this to perfection. Black and White 2 use much the same mechanics, and they really do work to the point where the player wonders whether this game truly could be made any better. This is where the real replay ability has always been found in a Pokemon game, and it is no different in Black and White 2.
The actual style of the game is much the same as found before. It is still an adventure RPG, where the player travels on a journey with creatures known as Pokemon to challenge the Gym Leader in each town, fight off an evil faction (in this case, Team Plasma), and then do battle with the Elite Four, the best trainers in the world. Throughout your journey there are countless Pokemon to encounter and add to your ever growing roster, and then decide a team of 6 from them all, and raise that party, gaining experience points through battles and raising your level, thereby increasing the statistics of each Pokemon. This really could not be built upon, and remains the most solid example of an RPG ever made.
Pokemon Black 2 proves that a game series almost 20 years old can still kick it, and really is a worthy addition to any game players collection. Perfection comes very rarely to the gaming world, but in the case of Pokemon Black and White 2, Game Freak proves once again why they are on top of the gaming pile.
Artificially grown zinc oxide nanowires, as seen under a scanning electron microscope, measure only a few nanometres in diameter.
Any innovator wishing to work on or sell products based on single-walled carbon nanotubes in the United States must wade through more than 1,600 US patents that mention them1. He or she must obtain a fistful of licences just to use this tubular form of naturally occurring graphite rolled from a one-atom-thick sheet. This is because many patents lay broad claims: one nanotube example covers “a composition of matter comprising at least about 99% by weight of single-wall carbon molecules”. Tens of others make overlapping claims.
This thicket of patents, including entire classes of nanotechnologies, basic methods and science, is hindering nanotechnology. Excessive patenting is increasing costs, slowing technical development and removing from the public domain fundamental knowledge about the understanding and control of matter on the atomic or molecular scale (1–100 nanometres).
Patent thickets occur in other high-tech fields, but the consequences for nanotechnology are dire because of the potential power and immaturity of the field. Advances are being stifled at birth because downstream innovation almost always infringes some early broad patents. By contrast, computing, lasers and software grew up without overzealous patenting at the outset2.
Nanotechnology offers the promise of enabling matter to be manipulated as easily as software. I believe that those working with it should adopt the open-source approach3 that has proved so successful for software development. All publicly funded nanotechnology research and innovation should be made available to everyone for free. A moratorium should be placed on patenting fundamental nanotechnologies and basic quantum-science applications, from which most developments stem.
Intellectual-property shackles
Nanotechnology is big business. According to a 2011 report by technology consultants Cientifica, governments around the world have invested more than US$65 billion in nanotechnology in the past 11 years. The sector contributed more than $250 billion to the global economy in 2009 and is expected to reach $2.4 trillion a year by 2015, according to business analysts Lux Research. Since 2001, the United States has invested $18 billion in the National Nanotechnology Initiative; the 2013 US federal budget will add $1.8 billion more.
This investment is spurring intense patent filing by industry and academia. The number of nanotechnology patent applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is rising each year and is projected to exceed 4,000 in 2012. Anyone who discovers a new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent that prevents others from using that development unless they have the patent owner's permission.
With universities increasingly operating like corporations, faculty members are pressured into locking away their results as intellectual property (IP), even though their research is largely funded by taxpayers. In the United States, the passage of the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act enabled US universities to retain ownership of the products of federally funded research that had previously been non-exclusively licensed to anyone on request4.
Broad patents covering the 'building blocks' of nanotechnology — such as quantum dots, nanowires and fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and methods for making them — hamper conscientious innovators, who must spend time and money to acquire all the necessary licences to avoid lawsuits5.
Examples of patents that cover basic components include one owned by the multinational chip manufacturer Intel, which covers a method for making almost any nanostructure with a diameter less than 50 nm; another, held by nanotechnology company NanoSys of Palo Alto, California, covers composites consisting of a matrix and any form of nanostructure. And Rice University in Houston, Texas, has a patent covering “composition of matter comprising at least about 99% by weight of fullerene nanotubes”.
The vast majority of publicly announced IP licence agreements are now exclusive, meaning that only a single person or entity may use the technology or any other technology dependent on it6. This cripples competition and technological development, because all other would-be innovators are shut out of the market. Exclusive licence agreements for building-block patents can restrict entire swathes of future innovation.
An evaluation of the carbon-nanotube patent thicket in 2006 found that of 446 carbon-nanotube patents issued in the United States, in which 8,557 claims were made, 420 of those claims were of a building-block type7. Imagine how equivalent patenting of the idea of a semiconductor or basic programming would have stifled electronics and computing.
These dense webs of overlapping rights are created partly as a result of the complex nature of the underlying science. Beating into this patent thicket is made difficult for innovators and patent examiners alike because of the field's interdisciplinary nature and its span across a range of industries. Nanoscience uses a rich and fast-evolving lexicon of technical language — carbon nanotubes can, for example, be described as nanofibres, fibrils, shells, nanocylinders, buckytubes or nanowires. For nanotechnology patent examiners at the USPTO, incomplete availability of information and inadequate training are recognized problems8.
Licences can be costly, but the potential expense of litigation for not acquiring them is often much greater. Multimillion-dollar legal fees have overwhelmed nanotechnology companies such as Evident Technologies (legal fees of $1 million compared with $4 million in assets) and Luna Innovations (ordered by a jury to pay $36 million despite assets of $20 million). Such risks dissuade other companies from working in the nanotechnology field.
The open-source alternative
This IP rush assumes that a financial incentive is necessary to innovate, and that without the market exclusivity (monopoly) offered by a patent, development of commercially viable products will be hampered. But there is another way, as decades of innovation for free and open-source software show. Large Internet-based companies such as Google and Facebook use this type of software. Others, such as Red Hat, make more than $1 billion a year from selling services for products that they give away for free, like Red Hat's version of the computer operating system Linux.
An open-source model would leave nanotechnology companies free to use the best tools, materials and devices available. Costs would be cut because most licence fees would no longer be necessary. Without the shelter of an IP monopoly, innovation would be a necessity for a company to survive. Openness reduces the barrier for small, nimble entities entering the market.
The field of nanotechnology is a combination of information (such as chemical formulae), software (for example, modelling tools) and hardware (such as atomic force microscopes). All three areas can adopt open-source principles, and some steps have already been taken towards this.
The nanoHUB.org website — established in 2002 by the Network for Computational Nanotechnology with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) — shares simulation programs based on open-source software for nanotechnology research as well as educational materials. Its content is used by hundreds of universities worldwide. Other types of free and open-source software, from microscope-control programs to molecular modelling tools, are proliferating.
Also following an open-source approach are programmes to share construction plans for large and expensive proprietary items of scientific equipment. For example, the SXM team at the University of Münster, Germany, provides free instructions for building a scanning tunnelling microscope. The team has reserved the right to sell the machine, but the list of materials, circuit diagrams and full instructions are posted online (sxm4.uni-muenster.de) so that anyone can build one. The university hosts a spin-off company that makes money by providing add-on services including analytics and workshops.
Critics might counter that the hardware and materials on which most nanotechnology companies base their products are fundamentally different from software, so an open nanotechnology industry would have difficulty attracting the capital needed to scale up. They argue that leading open-source hardware companies — Adafruit, BeagleBoard, Chumby, Liquidware, Seeed Studio and SparkFun Electronics — are small, new firms testing unproven business models.
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY
A nanotechnology researcher at a diffusion furnace handles silicon wafers used in integrated circuits.
Yet these and dozens of other companies, including Arduino, MakerShed and Solarbotics, earn millions of dollars in revenue each year through providing and supporting open-source hardware in other technological areas. Arduino's open-source microcontroller, for example, has been adopted by thousands of projects, including three-dimensional printing and additive layer manufacturing. These printers are in turn used to fabricate research tools in nanotechnology and other disciplines9, spearheading a cascade of innovation that The Economist has identified as leading to the “third industrial revolution”.
Europe is set to quash a precedent-setting initiative designed to tackle a disturbing side effect of common drugs — their impact on aquatic life.Landmark regulations intended to clean Europe’s waterways of pharmaceuticals are likely to be dead on arrival when they reach a key vote in the European Parliament next week.
The proposal by the European Commission, which would limit the concentrations in water of a widely used contraceptive and an anti-inflammatory drug, have sparked intense lobbying by the water and pharmaceutical industries, which say that the science is uncertain and the costs too high. European Union (EU) member states, alarmed by cost estimates of tens of billions of euros, seem to agree. Researchers and environmentalists question those estimates, and argue that the proposal should be judged principally on what they say is strong scientific evidence, rather than on financial concerns.
Last week’s Nobel prizes formally recognized scientists from just four nations — but newspaper headlines and press releases were eager to spread the glory further. Whereas France’s President François Hollande called Serge Haroche’s physics win “a source of national pride”, Helga Nowotny, president of the European Research Council, described the same award as affirmation of her agency’s investment in talent.
The Korea Herald, meanwhile, found a local connection to US researcher Robert Lefkowitz’s chemistry Nobel — two Korean scientists, Jihee Kim and Seungkirl Ahn, are currently working in his lab.
And although Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka was personally congratulated by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on his award in physiology or medicine, the San Jose Mercury News preferred to focus on Yamanaka’s training at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California, which, the paper said, recognized his talents back in 1993, when they hired him (Yamanaka still has a lab there).
This week,Nature examines the globalization of science According to the US National Science Foundation (NSF), almost one-quarter of research articles in 2010 featured authors from more than one country, up from 10% in 1990. The average number of authors on research papers, which now stands at 4.5, has doubled since 1980. Many areas of science are becoming international, not local, pursuits; researchers are increasingly criss-crossing the globe and becoming accustomed to working in two or three countries at once.Reactions such as these show how national pride and prestige still matter in an increasingly internationalized science system. The ultimate expression of that tension will surely come when the discovery of the Higgs boson — to which thousands of researchers and funds from tens of countries contributed — is rewarded with a call from Stockholm.
Yet although science is increasingly globalized — at least in terms of research outputs and collaborations — it is still funded and managed on a largely national basis. This may need to change. Joining up national priorities could allow economies of scale, possibly to the benefit of research into global challenges such as energy, climate and agriculture.
The head of the NSF, Subra Suresh, offers a vision of the future on page 337 in which some of the barriers to cross-border scientific collaboration have been removed. Suresh hopes that the Global Research Council can begin to collectively steward global science as if it were a national activity.
“Joining up national priorities could allow economies of scale.”
If the globalizing trend does continue, it could change the way that national governments view the outputs of science. Countries may even feel that, instead of insisting on making and exploiting their own discoveries, it is more efficient to capitalize on the breakthroughs made by others. South Korea and the United States are rapidly becoming the centres of graphene manufacturing, for instance, despite the 2010 physics Nobel being awarded to graphene researchers at the University of Manchester, UK.
Yet there are limits to internationalization. Mobility cannot stretch infinitely: relationships, families and quality of life put limits on how much researchers want to travel, and for how long. Meanwhile, some national research systems, such as that of Japan, are not particularly flexible and discourage scientists from spending too much time abroad.
And blurring the borders of national priorities may not be all good. Some countries are just beginning to build their own research capacity. Collaboration may allow them to share in the advances of others, but it could also start to dilute their national identity, subjugating local research priorities to the interests of larger nations. Striking the balance between local and global science will be the challenge.
With the world's population expected to grow from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion by 2050, a certain Malthusian alarmism has set in: how will all these extra mouths be fed? The world's population more than doubled from 3 billion between 1961 and 2007, yet agricultural output kept pace — and current projections suggest it will continue to do so. Admittedly, climate change adds a large degree of uncertainty to projections of agricultural output, but that just underlines the importance of monitoring and research to refine those predictions. That aside, in the words of one official at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the task of feeding the world's population in 2050 in itself seems “easily possible”.
Easy, that is, if the world brings into play swathes of extra land, spreads still more fertilizers and pesticides, and further depletes already scarce groundwater supplies. But clearing hundreds of millions of hectares of wildlands — most of the land that would be brought into use is in Latin America and Africa — while increasing today's brand of resource-intensive, environmentally destructive agriculture is a poor option. Therein lies the real challenge in the coming decades: how to expand agricultural output massively without increasing by much the amount of land used.
What is needed is a second green revolution — an approach that Britain's Royal Society aptly describes as the “sustainable intensification of global agriculture”. Such a revolution will require a wholesale realignment of priorities in agricultural research. There is an urgent need for new crop varieties that offer higher yields but use less water, fertilizers or other inputs — created, for example, through long-neglected research on modifying roots — and for crops that are more resistant to drought, heat, submersion and pests. Equally crucial is lower-tech research into basics such as crop rotation, mixed farming of animals and plants on smallholder farms, soil management and curbing waste. (Between one-quarter and one-third of the food produced worldwide is lost or spoiled.)
Developing nations could score substantial gains in productivity by making better use of modern technologies and practices. But that requires money: the FAO estimates that to meet the 2050 challenge, investment throughout the agricultural chain in the developing world must double to US$83 billion a year. Most of that money needs to go towards improving agricultural infrastructure, from production to storage and processing. In Africa, the lack of roads also hampers agricultural productivity, making it expensive and difficult for farmers to get synthetic fertilizers. And research agendas need to be focused on the needs of the poorest and most resource-limited countries, where the majority of the world's population lives and where population growth over the next decades will be greatest. Above all, reinventing farming requires a multidisciplinary approach that involves not just biologists, agronomists and farmers, but also ecologists, policy-makers and social scientists.
To their credit, the world's agricultural scientists are embracing such a broad view. In March, for example, they came together at the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development in Montpellier, France, to begin working out how to realign research agendas to help meet the needs of farmers in poorer nations. But these plans will not bear fruit unless they get considerably more support from policy-makers and funders.
The growth in public agricultural-research spending peaked in the 1970s and has been withering ever since. Today it is largely flat in rich nations and is actually decreasing in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where food needs are among the greatest. The big exceptions are China, where spending has been exponential over the past decade, and, to a lesser extent, India and Brazil. These three countries seem set to become the key suppliers of relevant science and technology to poorer countries. But rich countries have a responsibility too, and calls by scientists for large increases in public spending on agricultural research that is more directly relevant to the developing world are more than justified.
The private sector also has an important part to play. In the past, agribiotechnology companies have focused mostly on the lucrative agriculture markets in rich countries, where private-sector research accounts for more than half of all agricultural research. Recently, however, they have begun to engage in public–private partnerships to generate crops that meet the needs of poorer countries. This move mirrors the emergence more than a decade ago of public partnerships with drug companies to tackle a similar market failure: the development of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases. As such, it is welcome, and should be greatly expanded.
Genetically modified (GM) crops are an important part of the sustainable agriculture toolkit, alongside traditional breeding techniques. But they are not a panacea for world hunger, despite many assertions to the contrary by their proponents. In practice, the first generation of GM crops has been largely irrelevant to poor countries. Overstating these benefits can only increase public distrust of GM organisms, as it plays to concerns about the perceived privatization and monopolization of agriculture, and a focus on profits.
Nor are science and technology by themselves a panacea for world hunger. Poverty, not lack of food production, is the root cause. The world currently has more than enough food, but some 1 billion people still go hungry because they cannot afford to pay for it. The 2008 food crisis, which pushed around 100 million people into hunger, was not so much a result of a food shortage as of a market volatility — with causes going far beyond supply and demand — that sent prices through the roof and sparked riots in several countries. Economics can hit food supply in other ways. The countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pay subsidies to their farmers that total some US$1 billion a day. This makes it very difficult for farmers in developing nations to gain a foothold in world markets.
Nonetheless, research can have a decisive impact by enabling sustainable and productive agriculture — a proven recipe (as is treating neglected diseases) for creating a virtuous circle that lifts communities out of poverty.
Nestled in a steep fjord beneath three kilometres of Antarctic ice, the lost world of Lake Ellsworth has haunted Martin Siegert’s dreams ever since he got involved in subglacial research a dozen years ago. Finally, the time has come for him to explore its mysterious waters.
Next week, Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol, UK, packs his bags for the long journey to the opposite end of the world. Once he has reached the Rothera Research Station of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on an island off the Antarctic Peninsula, he and his science crew will fly about 1,000 kilometres into western Antarctica. On 5 December, the real work begins: drilling straight down through the ice to the pristine lake beneath. In its shadowy waters they hope to find forms of life that have not seen the light of day in millions of years. And in the lake bed sediments, the team will search for records of the poorly understood history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, potentially revealing how the mighty glacier has waxed and waned over time.
Is Siegert excited? “This is the very pinnacle of the science I’ve been doing since the turn of the millennium,” he says. “Now guess if I’m excited.”
Almost 380 subglacial lakes have been discovered and mapped in Antarctica,and have been explored remotely with ice-penetrating radar, gravity measurements and seismic investigations. These ancient lakes, large and small, owe their existence to geothermal heat that melts the Antarctic ice from below. Gravity and ice pressure force the melt water to flow, and it collects in the hollows and valleys of the continent under the ice.
If all goes to plan, Lake Ellsworth will be the second such lake to be breached. In February, a Russian team penetrated Lake Vostok — the largest and deepest Antarctic lake — completing a project that was launched more than 20 years ago. And a third effort is about to begin: next week, a US drilling team will set out for McMurdo Station in Antarctica. In January, the researchers will move to their target — subglacial Lake Whillans, a small, shallow body of water close to the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.
The quest to find exotic microbial life that may have evolved in or beneath these lakes is for many the most thrilling aspect of the research. Scientists have discovered a catalogue of bacteria elsewhere that mine their energy from rocks and minerals, and many assume that specialized microbes living in Antarctica’s hidden lakes might do the same.
“Life exists in extreme ecosystems, from the deep lithosphere to the high atmosphere,” says David Pearce, an environmental microbiologist with the BAS who will join the UK expedition. “I would be incredibly surprised if we get there and find no organisms at all.”
The Lake Vostok team found evidence that heat-loving bacteria may live in the bedrock surrounding that lake. The clues came from DNA in sediment that had become trapped in accretion ice — the lake water that freezes to the bottom of the massive glacier.
Lake Ellsworth might be a better bet for microbe-hunters, because it offers fewer hiding places. At roughly 12 kilometres long by 3 kilometres wide, with a depth of around 150 metres, it is but a puddle compared with the vast Lake Vostok. Measuring about 250 kilometres long by 50 kilometres wide, Vostok ranks among the world’s largest freshwater bodies. Ellsworth is neatly settled in a subglacial valley near the continental divide, where the overlying ice moves at its slowest. At around −30 °C, ice at the site is also twice as ‘warm’ as the ice on the Vostok plateau in East Antarctica, and is thinner by almost a kilometre. All this will make Lake Ellsworth much easier to access and extensively sample than its prominent cousin, says Siegert.But the upper layers of the lake itself seem to be lifeless, reported Sergey Bulat, a microbiologist at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia, at the 12th European Workshop on Astrobiology in Stockholm last month. No native microbes turned up in a preliminary analysis of lake water that had frozen onto the Russians’ drill bit, although the team will return to the site this season to collect more samples.
Even if Ellsworth and Whillans turn out to be sterile, the exploration might provide clues about what constrains life on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System. Siegert says that it would be a “phenomenal result” if the lakes were found to be devoid of life, because they offer everything that bacteria need — including liquid water and nutrients — and their water temperatures are just a few degrees below zero.
The UK team hopes to reach Ellsworth in a single three-day session, using a drill that will melt the ice with a high-pressure jet of water, heated to 90 °C. Once the borehole is finished, the team will have around 24 hours to deploy a water-sampling probe and a sediment corer before the hole refreezes.
“I would be incredibly surprised if we get there and find no organisms at all.”
The equipment, fastidiously prepared to make sure that it does not contaminate the lake with microbes from the surface, was approved last year by the parties to the Antarctic Treaty. Siegert reckons that drilling will consume some 60,000 litres of water, produced by melting snow at the site. The water will pass through a five-stage filtration system and then be treated with ultraviolet light to sterilize it. “The water we will use to melt into the lake is cleaner than the ice that naturally melts into the lake,” says Siegert. The 5-metre-long cylindrical titanium probe that will travel down the hole on the end of a tether, taking samples at different depths in the lake, was assembled in a clean room in Southampton, UK, and will be unwrapped from its sterilized bag only once it sits in the clean borehole.
The main challenge, says Siegert, will be to complete all sampling operations within the very short window of time. If things go badly, however, the team has enough fuel to reopen the hole by pumping in more hot water. If the probe gets lost or stuck, the researchers may drill a second hole and deploy a second set of sampling instruments. Indeed, they might do this anyway to get an extra round of sampling, potentially adding confidence to the scientific results, says Siegert.
If Lake Ellsworth does host life, it could be identified by the end of the year. But the exploration of Antarctica’s hidden lakes has just begun, says John Priscu, a glaciologist at Montana State University in Bozeman, who is overseeing the Lake Whillans foray. Data from more than just three sites are needed, he says, before scientists can hope to understand how the hidden lakes and rivers interact with the overlying ice sheet by lubricating its movement, for example. Studying more lakes could also reveal whether their discharges of minerals affect the chemistry and biological productivity of the Southern Ocean.
“We have come a long way since the time, not long ago, when people thought that Antarctica was but a benign block of ice,” says Priscu. “It makes me happy to see the excitement surrounding our science. But I’m afraid we know still less about Antarctica’s subglacial environments than we know about some places on Mars.”
