Prince, the master of reinvention, and following a recent string of internet only and free releases, one of the artists I though had really grasped the new direction of the music industry, until recently… You see, Prince seems to have had another crazy snap, and has demanded that any videos containing even a small snippet of his music be taken down from Youtube. That’s live performances, music videos, even peoples holiday footage if there any of his music in the background… This included the above video of Prince performing a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ at this years Coachella festival. But when Radiohead’s front man, Thom Yorke, caught wind of this he contacted youtube and demanded the video was restored, saying:-

“Really? He’s blocked it?” asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. “Surely, we should block it. Hang on a moment.”

Yorke added: “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”

So, do I see a copyright debate forming here? Exactly who owns the rights to the song? Radiohead for writing it? Or Prince for changing a few lyrics and playing it live?

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Valve have introduced a new service called Steam Cloud, which is an update to their Steam PC gaming service, bringing online storage for savegames, settings such as keyboard mappings, and other goodies like screenshots. Not only that, but the service is completely free to existing Steam subscribers. In future, it will also keep PC gamers’ systems updated with the latest and greatest drivers.

If only Microsoft would introduce a unified service like this for Xbox Live, people might stop complaining about having to pay for it.

Check out these 8-bit music videos, featuring music created on Famitracker, the NES-powered tracker. OK, so they’re not that exciting, but they are pretty cool in a retro kinda way. Loads more over at the creator, 72RK’s YouTube page, including the classics Thriller, Blitzkreig Bop, and Glory Box.

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It’s pretty much a given that almost every DS owner out there owns a piracy homebrew cart by now, and here’s something you can go and stick on it – the Flash Portal inspired StillAliveDS. It’s a Portal-infused platformer that brings a 2D adaptation of Valve’s massive hit game to Nintendo’s lovely little pocket console, and makes great use of the touchscreen for portal-firing skillz.

The game also features actual, collectible cake, the ability to download new levels using the DS’s wi-fi connection, and even a Java level editor so that you can create your own. Not only that, but as with all great homebrew, this game is completely free of charge. So go download it now.

It’s not often that I talk about smoking. I’m an ex-smoker myself, but I’m not one of these born-again pain in the arse knobheads about it – each to their own and all that. That said, even the most hardcore smokers have to agree that quitting some day or other might be a good idea, to save money if nothing else.

And here’s a great way to spend that money – providing you own a Nintendo DS, you’ll soon be able to kick the habit with the help of Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking, a game based on the world’s best-selling book on the subject, “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking” which has so far sold over 10 million copies. The game is under development at Ubisoft, who also brought us other meddling Big Brother-esque games My Weight Loss Coach and My Life Coach.

ACEWTSS will offer tips, as well as graphic images of tar-riddled lungs and such, and will also keep track of the player’s smoking habits and offer a personalised quitting strategy. The game is due out in November, so no need to panic just yet!

So it has been 7 whole days since us Europeans, myself included, got our hands on Rock Band, and for me it’s been 7 days of rocking out. So I’m going to give you my initial impressions…

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Firefox 3 is very nearly upon us, and what better way to show your support for free software than by pledging to download it on launch day?

That’s what the Mozilla Foundation are hoping you will do, and that Firefox users will then go ahead and fulfil that pledge and download their copy of the new browser on whichever day it ends up getting launched to the world. You see, they’re trying for a new Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours.

It’s an excellent idea which should hopefully make headlines, and therefore spread Firefox even more. Plus, if you put your name down you’ll get an email reminder when 3.0 is released, which can only be a good thing.

Sign up now!

How very, very, very odd. Still, this explains the game a little bit better, and ads with raving emo homos screaming cheesy lyrics explaining the products are something us children of the 80s were starting to miss dearly. I think.

Oh, and how do you activate star power?

By yelling “ROCK OUT!” at your DS.

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Yeah…..!?

What with the success of the Penny Arcade boys’ comic over the years, their massive gaming expo, and now their hugely successful game (third best Xbox Live Arcade launch of all time, in fact), it’s understandable that other webcomics might get a little, well… Jealous.

To be fair, the author of this Dueling Analogs strip does wish them well and congratulate them on their “awesome accomplishment”. But I’m sure they can’t help but feel just a little bit envious.

Here’s a render farm project built by a mad Swede known as Janne, featuring 6 motherboards, 12 4GB DIMMS, and 24 CPU cores in the form of 6 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quads. The computer runs distributed Linux and only uses 400W of power, is quiet, and fits into an IKEA filing cabinet. Best of all it serves its purpose well, by reducing Janne’s 3D rendering time from “all night” to 10-12 min. I guess 186 GFlops of power will do that for you.

That’s some serious muscle, especially with all the motherboards working as one like some kind of giant, power-mad mutant PC. Not only that, but he’s already working on HELMER II, which should churn out 12 teraflops of power. That’s the equivalent of over 50 PS3s!