Top 5 most games of 2008

'Grand Theft Auto IV'

The most anticipated game of 2008 has to be Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto IV.” This franchise has a legion of fans whose appetite for larceny, murder and fast cars has only grown since its release date was pushed back from last year’s holiday season. They’ll finally get their chance to live their life of crime when “GTA4” (for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems) hits the streets April 29th.

'Super Smash Bros. Brawl'

Nintendo may be known for games filled with cute and cuddly characters, but in its “Super Smash Bros.” franchise those same characters lay the smack down on each other. “Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” available for the Nintendo Wii on March 9th, features fan favorites Mario and Donkey Kong, as well as many others, fighting head-to-head and in group battles. And for the first time in the series' history the game will have Wi-Fi, so you can take on your friends no matter where they live.

Spore'

Electronic Arts’ “Spore” is aiming to become the Big Daddy of all simulation games. In it, players control the evolution of a species, starting as a microscopic organism and working your way up to a complex life form. You’ll build societies, conquer the planet, and even venture into space, where you’ll encounter and colonize other worlds.

There’s no doubt that “Spore” (which will be available Sept. 7th for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and mobile phones) is a bold endeavor on a massive scale. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s probably designer Will Wright - the man who also created “The Sims.”

Ghostbusters: The Video Game'

We’re big fans of the “Ghostbusters” films starring Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. That’s why we were so excited when we heard that “Ghostbusters: The Video Game” was going to feature the original cast doing the voice work. But when we found out that Aykroyd and Ramis, writers of the original screenplays, were also writing the game’s script, we were just plain ecstatic.

With the original crew creating an all-new adventure starring you as the new recruit, “Ghostbusters: The Video Game” could be thought of as an interactive sequel, a “Ghostbusters III” if you will, instead of a run-of-the-mill movie-based game.

Sierra’s “Ghostbusters: The Video Game,” which will be available for most systems, is expected to ship in the fall.

The Agency'

Are you a fan of massively multiplayer online games but tired of playing some medieval fantasy character? Would you prefer to play as a James Bond-style spy instead? Then Sony’s “The Agency” (available for both the PC and PS3) is something you definitely need to check out.

You can use stealth and subterfuge - as well as some crazy gadgets - to fight terrorism, or you can be the mercenary out to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait to see if you have what it takes to be a secret agent. Sony has yet to set a solid release date for “The Agency.”

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New Motorcycle User tips

Break-in Period:
The first 1000 miles of your new motorcycle are designated as the "break-in period." In order for your engine to seal itself and break-in properly, follow the specific instructions listed in your owner's manual. To ensure proper oil distribution among all engine parts, be sure to allow your engine to warm up before you ride. An extra minute of warm-up will allow the engine oil to circulate to all needed engine parts. Do not race or rev your engine immediately after starting. When riding during the break-in period, accelerate gradually and try not to travel at any one speed for a long period of time. Please refer to your owners manual for specific directions on how to break-in your model properly.
General Safety tips:
Always inspect your motorcycle before every ride.

• Tire pressure
• Headlights
• Oil level
• Cables and suspension

Before starting the engine, always use the rule of "FINE-C" as your pre-start checklist:

• Fuel-Fuel valve on
• Ignition-Ignition switch on
• Neutral-Shift the transmission into neutral.
• Engine cut-off switch-Set the switch to the run position
• Choke and clutch-Set the choke according to the engine's temperature. Squeeze the clutch if the electric starter on your motorcycle requires it.

Other saftey tips:
 

• Always be sure to wear the proper riding apparel including boots, gloves, eye protection and helmet.
• Do not ride while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Always be alert for other drivers and riders around you.
• Maintain your bike in good condition.
• Tread lightly when off-road and respect the environment. Ride responsibly.
• Remember motorcycle safety begins and ends with you.

Cleaning tip:
For the prolonged life of your motorcycle, always wash down immediately after being exposed to seawater, rain, dusty roads or salt scattered on icy roads. By following these precautions you can prolong the life and performance of your motorcycle:
 
Before washing...
 

• Cover the rear openings of your muffler with plastic bags and secure with rubber bands (be sure your mufflers are not hot to the touch or  they will melt the plastic bags!)
• Cover the brake levers, switch housings,  ignition switch, instruments and air cleaner cover with plastic bags to avoid a direct spray of water.
• Be careful when spraying the brakes, master cylinders and calipers.
• Try not to spray under the fuel tank. If water gets into the ignition coils or the spark plug caps your bike will not start!
• Do not spray directly into the front and rear wheel hubs, steering pivot and swingarm pivot.
• Repeated, direct exposure to water will cause rust and corrosion.
• NEVER wax or lubricate the brake discs. Clean disc surfaces with an oilless solvent such as trichloroethylene or acetone.

After washing...
 

• Remove all plastic bags and wipe all covered components dry.
• Wipe off brake discs with dry, clean cloth.
• Start engine and allow to idle for at least 5 minutes.
• Clean the entire vehicle thoroughly.
• Run engine for a few minutes to warm the oil.
• Completely drain out the old oil and replace with fresh engine oil. Dispose of oil properly.
• Empty all fuel from the tank and empty the carburetor by unscrewing the drain screw at the float bowl. (Fuel left in the carburetor will break down and clog essential cmponents).
• Dispose of fuel properly.
• Remove the empty fuel tank, pour about a half-pint of motor oil into tank and roll the tank around to coat the inner surfaces thoroughly to prevent rust. Pour out the excess oil when finished.
• Dispose of oil properly.
• Remove the spark plugs and put several drops of motor oil into each cylinder.
• Turn engine over a few times to coat the cylinder walls with oil.
• Replace spark plugs to seal out moisture. Reduce tire pressure by about 20%. If possible, set the motorcycle on a box or stand so both wheels are suspended above the ground. If you cannot find a box or stand, just place boards under the tires to keep moisture from deteriorating the rubber.
• Spray lubricant or oil on unpainted metal surfaces to prevent rusting.
• DO NOT spray oil on rubber parts and hoses.
• Lubricate all cables.

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Turn Firefox into a Google Chrome Clone

Required/Recommended Components:

Portable Firefox

Portable Firefox 3.0.3 from Portable Apps/John T. Haller

Extensions

ChromiGlass by Triton (Version 1.01b.1.0.16) *Requires Mozilla Account & Login*

This is what helps to move the tabs to the top of the browser and turn them just the same way as Iron/Chromium/Chrome while providing the Aero glass effect beside the tabs as well.

Personal Menu by Merci Chao (Version 4.1pre)

This helps hides the Menu Bar (the Menu Bar temporarily reappears when you push the Alt key).

Theme

Chromifox by Falconer (Version 1.0)

Sets up the overall Chrome look and feel.

Setup Instructions

1. Install portable Firefox. (The Desktop is an easy access place for it.)


2. Once you have your new portable Firefox ready to go, install the Chromifox theme and both extensions.


3. Restart portable Firefox.


4. Once you have restarted, you will notice that things look a little bit weird at the top of the browser. You will have top to bottom: your tabs (with lots of Aero glass effect goodness), your menu bar, a odd, very thin Aero glass effect strip, your navigation bar, and the bookmarks bar.


5. The first thing to do is go to "View" in your Menu Bar, go to Toolbars, and deselect Menu Bar (this is where the Personal Menu extension helps out since this is usually not available in the menu). This also helps to remove the odd, very thin Aero glass effect strip. Optional: If you want to hide the status bar, you can do that at this time as well.


6. Next, right click in your Navigation Bar and select Customize. You can now pull your search bar into the Customize Window in order to hide it. While you have the Customize Window open, pull the icon for the Personal Menu extension into the Search Bar's former position. This helps to more closely match the two icon appearance on the right side of Iron/Chromium/Chrome and gives you easy access to the additional options for the Personal Menu extension if you would like to use them.


7. Remove any pre-included bookmarks that came with Portable Firefox that you do not want to keep and add your favorites.

After a few helpful readers made suggestions to the setup, Asian Angel updates the list:

After a little more experimentation, I have the final list of extensions along with the theme used to turn my portable Firefox into an extremely good copy of Iron/Chromium/Chrome.

The extensions that I used help to reproduce the look and also many of the particular functions found in Iron/Chromium/Chrome. Note: The Omnibar extension mentioned in previous comments caused problems with the ChromiGlass extension.

10 Extensions

• ChromiGlass (Version 1.01b.1.0.16)


• DOM Inspector (Version 2.0.1)


• Download Statusbar (Version 0.9.6.3)


• Location Bar² (Version 1.0.3)


• New Tab Button On Tab Right (Version 0.5.6)


• Personal Menu (Version 4.1 pre)


• Prism (Version 0.2.1)


• Resizeable Text Area (Version 0.1d)


• Show Go (Version 1.0.3)


• Stealther (Version 1.0.6)

Theme

Chromifox (Version 1.0)

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How To Create animated GIFs

n this article you will learn how to create a very basic animated gif consisting of two frames. I have used Paint Shop Pro but you can employ your favorite graphic program. I recommend that you first read the article on animated Gifs, if you haven't do so already. Animated Gifs are gif images that consist of two or more frames, which are played one after the other to give a semblance of animation - quite like standard animation techniques.

The individual frames in an animated gif can be created as separate images that are then brought togheter to form an animated Gif. And this is how we will make our animated image. We will first create two images that form the two frames of our animation and then bring them together to form the Gif image.

Image #1 (60 X 60 pixels)
Image #2 (60 X 60 pixels)


I've created the above two images in PaintShop Pro... you can use any image editing tool. Let us now see how we can combine these two images to create an animated gif.

Start the animated gif creation program. I've used Animation Shop, which comes free with Paint Shop Pro. This is a great tool and very simple to use. It also has lots of great features and built-in effects for creating animated Gifs. (To know more about Animation Shop, click here.)

Click on File - Animation Wizard. Make sure that the "Same size as the first image frame" radio button is selected. Click on Next.

Set the Image canvas color to Transparent (select the Transparent radio button) and click on Next.

In the next window, make sure the "Upper left corner of frame" and "With canvas color" radio buttons are selected and "Scale frames to fit" checkbox is not checked.

You can either have your animated gif repeat endlessly or specify the number of loops. As of now, select the "Yes, repeat the animation indefinitely" radio button. You can also set the time for which each frame will be displayed. Change this value to 50. Thus, each frame will play for 50/100 or 1/2 a second. Click on Next.

Now, click on the Add Image button and browse to the two images you made previously.

You can selecte multiple images using SHIFT-CLICK or CONTROL-CLICK combinations. Animation Shop also lets you adjust the sequence of images. You can change the sequence by first clicking on the image you have added and then clicking the Move Up or Move Down buttons.

Click Next and then click on the Finish button.



Animation Shop now displays your two images in the specified sequence.

Viewing the animation

Click on the View Animation button or select View - Animation. The program starts the animation in its window. Lo, behold! We have ourselves an animated Gif image.

Saving the animation

To save our creation, click on File - Save As. Type in a name for the animated gif and click on Save. Select the number of colors by dragging the scale. Remember, more number of colors, the larger the gif. It is always a good idea to duplicate (CONTROL-D) the animated image you have created before saving and then check the size of the file and the look of the image under different color depths.

We'll save this image with 16 colors (4 bit color depth).

Here is how our animated Gif image looks like.

In the next article, I will provide instructions on creating a more complex animated Gif image - Animated Gif banners. Animated Gifs have been exploited to their full potential as animated advertising banners on the web. They provide an easy and cross-platform compatible way of displaying animation on web pages. Though web banners created in Flash have given animated gif banners a run for their money, its always a good idea to have an animated gif version of the Flash banner, which can be displayed on the client browsers in which the Flash plugin is no installed.

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Best Download Managers

DownThemAll (All Platforms)

Firefox extension DownThemAll (dTa) is a powerful download manager with a stable of advanced features to enhance your download experience. As the name suggests, one marquee feature of dTa is the ability to download every image or linked file on a page in one fell swoop; if you don't want every file, dTa has advanced filtering criteria to help you get exactly what you want. What's more, dTa can also boost your download speeds up to 400% by splitting files into multi-part downloads. If you're new to dTa, check out our guide to supercharging your Firefox downloads with DownThemAll.

FlashGet (Windows)

FlashGet is a free, standalone Windows download manager. The application delivers tons of advanced features like DownThemAll, including pause and resume, file splitting, and download acceleration. FlashGet can organize your downloads once they're saved to your computer and it supports multiple transfer protocols, from HTTP and FTP to BitTorrent. If you like the look of FlashGet and you're a Firefox user, be sure to grab the FlashGot Firefox extension to integrate FlashGet directly with your Firefox downloads. It also has specialized features for downloading flash video from the likes of YouTube.

Free Download Manager (Windows)

Free Download Manager (FDM) is a beefy open-source download manager with an impressive feature set similar to DownThemAll and FlashGet. It supports download acceleration, file splitting, and multiple transfer protocol support. FDM and FlashGet both display an always-on-top translucent drop box on your desktop so you can easily drag new downloads into the app, and like FlashGet, you can integrate FDM directly with Firefox with the FlashGot extension.

Download Statusbar Firefox Extension (All Platforms)

The Download Statusbar Firefox extension streamlines and supercharges Firefox's default download manager and doesn't use a separate window do to it—instead it places downloads and progress bars in Firefox's statusbar (fitting name, isn't it?). That's not all that Download Statusbar offers, though: The add-on also integrates with your anti-virus application for automatic download scanning, has several configurable options, and is totally customizable. If you liked the streamlined look of downloads when we took you on a screenshot tour of Google Chrome, Download Statusbar brings the same basic look and feel to Firefox.

Firefox's Built-In Download Manager (All Platforms)

Sometimes the built-in tools are all you need, which is why many readers still prefer Firefox's built-in download manager to handle their downloads. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the other featured download managers—the most notable new features in Firefox's download manager are as-you-type search and pause and resume of downloads—but it's solid, and that's all many people are looking for.

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Best Media Converters

Super (Windows)

Super is a free media converter that acts as a graphical front end to several of the most powerful command line tools like FFmpeg, MEncoder, and MPlayer. The application boasts extensive options for customizing your preferences with virtually any aspect of your conversion. The downside to that control is that Super's interface is cluttered and intimidating for first-time users. Luckily for most purposes, converting a file to the right format with Super is as simple as selecting your output format (e.g., Apple iPod) and just sticking with the defaults.



FormatFactory (Windows)

Format Factory is a free media converter for Windows that converts video, audio, and even images between formats. With a nice icon-driven interface for helping you choose the kind of conversion you're looking for, FormatFactory is one of the friendliest batch media converters you'll find.
MediaCoder (All Platforms)

MediaCoder is a batch media transcoder that converts video and audio from and to most popular formats through a powerful graphical interface. Like Super, MediaCoder is a front-end for a number of command line media tools, allowing you to get as simple or complex as you want with your conversions. MediaCoder is available on all platforms, but it's best supported on Windows. MediaCoder is also available in device-specific flavors for the iPhone and iPod touch, PSP and more.

HandBrake (All Platforms)

HandBrake is a popular open-source media converter that encodes video from DVDs to many popular output formats. Available in both graphical and command line flavors, HandBrake can't convert the range of formats the rest can—it's limited to MPEG video (that includes DVD video). HandBrake easily earns its place as one of the five best DVD ripping tools, but it doesn't have the versatility of many of the other applications featured in this Hive.
FFmpeg (All Platforms)

FFmpeg is free, cross platform command-line encoding tool that powers many of the more popular graphical applications in this Hive Five. While FFmpeg has more of a learning curve than the rest, it's also undeniably powerful and flexible. If converting your media from the command line with FFmpeg appeals to you, check out how to FFmpeg your way to media conversion bliss..

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MI6 Sells Digital Camera Containing Terrorist Images

Another classic data leakage….and once again it happend on Ebay! This time it’s a British agency known as MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) demonstrating a distinct lack of intelligence.

How on earth does something like even happen? Even smaller agencies and companies I’ve worked with have rigorous data destruction policies when old equipment is recycled or sold off, I’m sure MI6 has something similar.

The UK government is investigating how a digital camera containing terrorist images apparently taken by MI6 was sold on eBay.

The Nikon CoolPix camera was bought for £17 by a 28 year-old man from Hertfordshire and contained the names of al-Qaeda members, fingerprints and suspects’ academic records as well as pictures of rocket launchers and missiles, according to The Sun.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that a police investigation is under way.”

However she refused to comment on whether the camera was put on sale by an MI6 operative, despite it containing details of MI6’s computer network.

Terrorist information, names and more for only £17! What a bargain.

It does puzzle me a bit htouhg, why would all of these documents be stored on a camera? Perhaps someone using the camera to covertly move documents out of MI6?

It seems odd for anything other than images to be on a CoolPix.

MI6 is the foreign intelligence service for the UK government with a broadly similar remit as the US CIA.

Terrorism author Neil Doyle said: “These are MI6 documents relating to an operation against al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq. It’s jaw-dropping that they got into the public domain.

“Not only do they divulge secrets about operations, operating systems and previously unheard-of MI6 departments, but they could put lives at risk.”

Really bad PR for the agency I must say…at least no harm came of it and it was exposed so hopefully someone in power will do something about it and make sure the policies that I’m sure they have are implemented and enforced properly.

There’s no point having policies and procedures if they aren’t enforced, it’s not just good to do the paperwork, you have to put it in practice too!

Source: darknet

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