GameTap hits the 1,000 Game Mark and Takes over the World!

GameTap™ celebrated hitting the 1,000 game mark today by releasing Sid Meier’s Civilization IV to subscribers! This much asked for, and eagerly anticipated, title hit the GameTap library during todays monumental update. I say monumental because 1,000 games is a heck of a number for a service like this.

The GameTap™ forums have been rife with speculation over preceding weeks, wondering exactly which game GameTap™ would bring to celebrate the 1,000 mark – a few guessed Civ IV but seeing it actually come through is another thing entirely. Bravo to GameTap! Keep up the good work!

What is GameTap™?

GameTap is a service that provides many classic games from Consoles like the Atari 2600, Sega Saturn, Genesis, and more; as well as a large amount of newer titles like Jericho, Psychonauts, and now Civilization IV. There are 2 basic membership levels, Free (or Green) members can play a select series of games each monthly period (usually around 100 or so) and Paid (Gold) members can play all 1000 games with no restrictions (other than the copy protection schemes to avoid piracy). Paid membership being only $9.95/month (with discounts for larger subscription blocks) it is a no brainer to jump on board and get into it – especially when compared to other similar services that charge per game.

Why not head on over to GameTap.com and check it out? Come on.. I dare ya!

GameTap™ is a Turner Broacasting Systems Company and a part of the Turner Entertainment New Media Network, ©2007 all rights reserved.

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, Civ, Civilization are all trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

Notice: I am not affiliated with GameTap™, Turner Broadcasting Systems, or any of its affiliates. Nor am I being paid to hype them – I just enjoy their service and thus the lack of any cynical/sarcastic/rude commentary towards GameTap and partners. The views I express in this post are the views of myself.. and I really don’t care if you agree with them.

Skype targetted for Malware .. and stupid people

So apparently some of the oh so ‘intelligent’ Malware community have decided to target Skype users with a.. laughable.. IM type attack (You know, the type of thing you see on Yahoo! IM now and then). Why do I say its laughable? Well, according to the place I learned about it (ZDNet – link at the bottom), the target user is contacted with an IM saying that their computer is infected, visit blah blah.com to get a free scan – that should be a pretty big tip off to anyone with a partial cranial insert right? Well, apparently it isn’t that hard to trick computer users – in some of their defense, they have no way of determining that Skype is for IM’s / Voice chat.. not for inspecting your system for bad stuff (Though some application of brainpower might help).

According to the ZDNet article, the IM directs users to a page which does a fake scan and pops up a dialog box with fake found results. Clicking anywhere in the box directs you to a checkout page of a shopping cart for a $19.95 ’security patch’… I almost feel sorry for those caught by this type of thing.. almost but not quite.

Heres a dose of common sense people: If an instant message says that you are infected.. ignore it and report (as spam or whatever) the sender immediately. Do NOT click on any links, go to any referenced sites, or download anything. If in doubt, use a real scanner solution (AVG Anti-Virus, Microsoft OneCare, etc) to scan your computer.

The best defense is a good sense of when not to click.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=670

Related Link(s): A list of known Rogue Anti-Spyware at SpywareWarrior.com

Note: All opinions on the intelligence of the average human in this article are mine and mine alone. I reserve the right to judge people for their stupidity, and assume that the same will be done for me.