Gaming Cloud is coming – rejoice

The future of computing is here and now the cloud that we hear so much about is providing its first sprinkle. And once again it’s the game industry that is pulling the rest of the world along.

Currently you can sample 2 trials of true online gaming in Europe and 3 if you’re in the US.

www.awomo.com is making all the right noises in my mind, allowing you to try a Lara Croft game in beta – free beta sign-up for the whole world. This works with the download of a browser (no chrome L ) plug-in – then the game starts to download.

6 mins later (might be slower for slower connections), you can start playing. The rest game continues to download in the background. One complaint you don’t get to say the file location. The website say’s it will offer top titles which you can buy out-right at a cheaper rate because there is no packaging, a hire service where you can hire games for a cost, after you have hired the game 5 times it is considered bought. My favourite a monthly subscription which allows you to play all the titles (why pay for World of warcraft, when I can play lots of new games), please let it be £9.99 or less.

Another example of Gaming cloud is www.quakelive.com, Quake has always been a front runner in technology terms and here it doesn’t fail either. Beta is free again sign-up and plug-in your browser. Not sure on the future of this but as a free half-hour blast, it ran smoothly and quickly. After a quick training session you get to choose if you want to play against / with bots or people and let the frag feast begin. I opted for a game with bots as am rusty in all my FPS and 40mins later I realised just how rusty I was J  I recommend giving it a quick blast.

Finally (for now) www.onlive.com is defiantly a USA company with lots of marketing behind it, “developed stealthily for 3 years” WTF? Anyway this seems to offer the most advanced out there currently; I can’t say if it lives up to all the noise it’s making as it is only in Beta in the USA (big mistake I think). Offering what is basically a virtue console on your PC and a mini console which you can connect to your TV. Am sure it will involve a plug-in to your browser for computer owners, but apart from that I can’t tell if there is or isn’t any downloading. It claims on the website for instant playing but who knows (not people in Europe). 

 

That’s what’s out there at the moment, am sure the big boys (come on Virgin) will swoop once the smaller companies have done the hard work. Personally I think onlive.com might be leaving the door wide open for Awomo.com to take the European market with there current strategy, but again that might just be the fact I want to try the thing and can’t J

 

Happy Hunting

Work Zombie…

 

Age of Stupid

Age of Stupid?

So a new film is out about what we are doing now to destroy the planet and about how we have a chance to fix it before we go beyond the event horizon of no return. 

Age of stupid (http://www.ageofstupid.net/) is set in the year 2055 and is narrative by an archaeologist looking at footage from the year 2008 when we had a chance to make a change. I haven’t seen the film so I can’t judge it. I hope it gets its message across as it is an important message, but this blog today isn’t about the film. Why use the film as a title then? You could ask, well I think it’s wrong for this film, it’s not the Age of Stupid we live in, it’s the Century of Greed. Greed is the main reason we are at a point in time where time is running out for all living creatures and it will remain the reason we end up at the very least leave the planet and at the worst make the human race extinct, making way for the next species to become the dominant force.

The Government is spending billions saving the banks; these are the same banks that charge you £25 pounds for going £3 over credit. The same banks that the CEO gets paid more then a top 4 premier league team (that’s team not player). And the government is paying billions to help major energy companies build nuclear bombs, sorry power stations in my / your back yard and then claim that it is a clean energy source. 

Now am not a scientist and would never claim to know the output / efficiency / clean energy ratio of a nuclear power station, but I also know duck and cover isn’t going to protect you from a nuclear blast.

Where are the billions of pounds being spent on a clean power plant? Am not even going to embarrasses people and ask for a billion pounds to be spent on a solution because there are plenty of solutions out there already, but they are always talked about separately, they are all talked about on a small scale and they are always talked about as if it is something to consider in the future. Why can’t we have a geo-thermal off shore platform power station, built using a wind farm as its legs, connected by a wave farm and the whole structure covered in solar Panels? What would the cost be, how big would it need to be to run a city? Imagine if it cost 1 billion pounds and it provided enough energy to run 1/12 of the country. The government wouldn’t build it, couldn’t build it, the reason is because the energy companies would put to much pressure on the government. The big boy’s with all the money wouldn’t like it because you could provide almost free energy. Suddenly the big boys making more money then I / we could imagine wouldn’t be making money. It’s the same with a car, if you had free energy that a car can run on for nothing, more people in "power" start losing that "power" and they won’t like it. This crap about hybrid cars is all about making Joe public still go to the pumps and spend their money. Why do you think the main people pumping research into electric car’s are the oil people, so they can limit how much is given out to the public, so they can copyright anything and everything. 

It is a shame because free energy is out there, are own government has tested geo-thermal power plants (http://www.businesssouthampton.com/content/default.asp?PageId=214&PrevPageId=220 ) but you hear nothing about the success or failures of it.

I think this would be the first step for mankind is to realise money isn’t the be all and end all, the paper and news programmes would have you believe. But am also convinced it would never happen in the UK / Europe or the USA, a political party in a small country that could do stuff under the radar would be the only way to start this revolution. If anyone needs help building this and can provide accommodation and food for me and my family am quite happy to help build it, to see if they will come.

Signed

Work Zombie – looking for life