Star Trek fans yearning for a little bit more of the TNG/DS9/Voyager action in the Prime timeline can jump into Gene Roddenberry’s universe for free via Star Trek Online starting January 17, 2012. Original parent company Perfect World Entertainment, which acquired the MMORPG and its developer Cryptic Studios from Atari for $49.8 million in cash back in May, planned to launch the free-to-play model by the end of the year.
“And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online,” Perfect World Entertainment’s CEO, Kelvin Lau, said in a recent earnings call for Q2 2011. “This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market.”
Currently there’s no reason given as to why the new free-to-play model has been delayed, but Star Trek Online executive producer Stephen D’Angelo indicated that its been in the works since the very beginning. However the game’s original publisher Atari didn’t want to launch the MMORPG with a free-to-play model, so Cryptic put it on indefinite hold. Perfect World Entertainment, which owns other free-to-play MMOGs, naturally gave the model the green light.
Thursday D’Angelo said that current subscribers will be rewarded with 400 free Cryptic Points each month starting December 1, 2011 as a “thank you” to loyal customers. “The stipend is granted on the ‘anniversary day’ for your account,” he said. “This is the day in the month which corresponds to the day after your subscription would renew if it was monthly. 3-month, 6-month, 12-month, and lifetime accounts use the day of the month in which they were started for this purpose. This means that you won’t necessarily get your stipend right at the beginning of the month, but it will be coming for you at the appropriate time during December and each following month. Stipend points from STO can only be spent in STO.”
On Tuesday D’Angelo told IGN that Cryptic is taking a different approach to the free-to-play model with Star Trek Online than it did with Champions Online. “We’re revisiting the game’s economy,” he said, adding that the high-end equipment will be more difficult to acquire and the low-end equipment will be extremely easy to acquire. Dilithium will also be the only item in the game that can be auctioned off for Cryptic Points.
“Dilithium buys you the cool gear,” he explained. “People who buy Cryptic Points can go to our store and can buy the cool ships, but they can’t get the cool gear. We’re going to let people sell their Dilithium to other players for Cryptic Points.”
There will also be a limit to the amount of Dilithium a player can acquire through normal means in a given day, he added. Players will also have access to Cryptic’s in-game cash store. “If you have no money and want to spend no money you can literally get everything available in our store,” he said.
Someone lost his bicycle. It happens to many people. But this Matt O’Rourkelost his bicycle, and some 18 months later got his bicycle back. Now how to fuck did that happened? Well, we have the internet to thank to. Here’s the story straight from Matt.
About a year and a half ago, some dickstache stole my bike, and in an effort to get it back I posted the notice below to Craigslist.
I opened cans of peanuts at Safeway, farted in them, and then put the lids back on as fast as I could.
I adopted an abandoned cat, and then abandoned it.
Those were the darkest of days.
And then, one day, a few months ago, my phone rang, and some complete random on the other end of the line (who really, really didn’t want me to use his name here) said he’d been stopped by a woman while riding across the Williamsburg Bridge when she recognized the bike from the Craigslist post. He told her he’d bought it off the Assmaster in Tompkins Square Park for a couple hundred dollars, not knowing it was stolen, and now he wanted to give it back.
Long story short, he did, the Bologna is back in the stable, and I’m a whole man again. But there’s just one problem; he who doesn’t want to be named, never told me how to reach him.
So as much as @copyrider and I would like to give him the bountiful rewards for which he is due, we can’t.
If you’re reading this, and you’re the random, by all means, present yourself.
Finally, this needs saying:
It worked.
You shared it, and a lot of people saw it.
And because you did, I got my bike back.
Thank you internet, that was very nice of you.
(Also, the $1000 dollar offer for the thief’s nads on a stick still stands.)
This story originally appeared on CopyMatt’s Tumblr on November 11, 2011
Belgian police tracked down this speeder after he posted a video online of a 182mph joyride in a $257,000 Aston Martin. Thanks to the car’s rarity, police easily identified his license plate from other Facebook videos. Now he faces losing his license and the car.
Those gleaming, proud numbers on the speedometer could cost him not just his license and $4,774 in fines, but also his car, valued at around $257,000. The police were able to identify the driver’s license plate number by checking through other videos of the special edition Aston Martin V12 Vantage Carbon Black the speeder had posted on Facebook. It’s as if the damning evidence was just being streamed straight from the passenger seat to police computers.
These days, it’s not just public roads that are too small for supercars; the whole internet is getting too small for their speed. He might have enjoyed 15 anonymous minutes of fame and then faded away like any other viral street racer, were it not for his idiocy in posting other videos of himself online. Next time don’t try to post too many details of yourself on the internet.
Daihatsu will be bringing this D-X sports car concept to the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show, a machine that the small car experts bills as a “proposition for a new aesthetic of sports car that exerts a one-of-a-kind presence”. They’re calling the D-X “a new kind of a sports car”, we’re thinking of a new kind of hybrid Copen!
Among the unique features of the D-X (for d-cross) is a resin-based body that allows owners to enjoy a multitude of variations, according to Daihatsu. It’s seen here with some “4X4 style” body cladding normally seen or superminis and MPVs, but rarely sports cars. We presume that the black stuff can be taken off by owners for a more conventional look, as and when they please. Not seen here, but Daihatsu says the interior is “spartan feeling”. Fleshy meat color with six pack and lots of slow-mo lines?
Under the hood is a two-cylinder engine with direct-injection and turbo, said to strike a balance between the joy of driving and fuel-efficiency, which isn’t much of an info to me.
The company adds that the D-X offers a driving experience with that “sense of oneness between person and vehicle that only a compact car can provide” a line that’s not too unlike Mazda’s Jinba Ittai message for the MX-5.
Pull out the candles and champagne, because the Intel 4004 is celebrating a major birthday today — the big four-oh. That’s right, it’s been exactly four decades since Intel unveiled the world’s first commercially available CPU, with an Electronic News ad that ran on November 15th, 1971. Yes, the computer is that old!
It all began in 1969, when Japan’s Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation asked Intel to create 12 chips for its Busicom 141-PF calculator. With that assignment, engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff and Stanley Mazor set about designing what would prove to be a groundbreaking innovation — a 4-bit, 16-pin microprocessor with a full 2,300 MOS transistors, and about 740kHZ of horsepower. The 4004′s ten micron feature size may seem gargantuan by contemporary standards, but at the time, it was rather remarkable — especially considering that the processor was constructed from a single piece of silicon.
In fact, Faggin was so proud of his creation that he decided to initial its design with “FF,” in appropriate recognition of a true work of art. Hit up the coverage links below for more background on the Intel 4004, including a graphic history of the microprocessor, from the Inquirer.
Ok, you shouldn’t take this with a grain of salt, but a handful of them. Get ready, cause this is quite a bizarre concept. Engadget just got handed imagery and specs of a possible HTC device in the works codenamed the Zeta. It’s a quad-core handset, much like the Edge that was leaked last week, but it has a much faster 2.5GHz APQ8064 CPU along with 1GB of RAM running the show, on a 4.5-inch 720p HD display.
According to their source, the uniquely shaped smartphone will come with Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed with Sense UI (version 4.0 wasn’t specified, but we’d be surprised to see it any lower on an ICS device) and have 32GB of internal storage space, an 1,830mAh battery, Beats Audio, Bluetooth 4.0, an 8MP rear camera with dual LED flash, 1080p video capture and a 1.3MP front-facing cam.
What about size? The Zeta is said to measure at 109.8 x 60.9 x 9.8mm (4.32 x 2.4 x 0.39 inches) and weigh 5.15 ounces (146g). It certainly has an intriguing look; the sharp corners would be a huge departure from HTC’s recent designs choices, though it appears to have HTC’s signature unibody build in the back.
And just when you say “meh so fake”, a check at Qualcomm’s site does show that the APQ8064 really exist, and will arrive in products in early 2012. Yes, 2.5GHz quad-core superphones are that close!
Everyone’s into 3D these days. Retailers are promoting 3D tee vees heavily, and they’re even throwing in one or two 3D Active-Shuttle glasses. So you’re tempted to join in, but you just don’t see the point because you don’t have any 3D movies? All your collections are Blu-ray, and all your home-made videos are boring 2D and shaky videos? Well, we’ve got good news for you this time, and it’s a very good one.
No, you don’t have to throw away any of your existing movie collections and retake your precious home-made videos. Just convert ‘em into 3D! Just use this ‘2D to 3D 1080P Full HD Video Converter’. Yes, the name says it all. All it does is to convert your 2D contents into 3D, and get all those awesome 3D effects almost immediately. And hey, you don’t even need to connect this device to your computer, because this ain’t no ordinary converting software. It just converts on the fly!
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