Long but important post warning! (discus on the forums here)

I'm still trying to understand the full implications of this so read the following with that in mind.

There's are a couple of bills (H.R. 5889 & S. 2913) passing through the US Governmental Houses that are causing more than just a little bit of concern for artists and creatives the world over. Even though it's currently an issue specific to the USA, it does have wider more far reaching implications, it concerns something within the realms of copyright called 'Orphan Works'.

If you've not heard about this before then 'Orphan Works' are essentially any creative work (image, painting, sculpture, digital work etc.. etc.. in short any form of creative expression that's put down in "tangible form") for which the copyright owner and/or originating author cannot be found or determined, hence it being 'orphaned' (without [sic] 'parents').

All creative works are protected under (local and) international copyright laws, the most important of which, internationally, is something referred to as the Berne Convention. In a nutshell this 'treaty' protects creative (authored) works from being exploited without the originating authors permission by placing them, upon creation, under the all encompassing protection of 'copyright' (the Berne Convention apparently doesn't recognize or give merit to anything that would be considered 'Orphan Works'). It also sets in place a mechanism authors can use for the levy of heavy financial penalties if works are exploited, and it's this latter aspect that the current Orphan Works legislation concerns (amongst others); the limitation of damages liable by copyright infringements;

"...Potential users of orphan works often fail to display or use such works out of concern that they may be found liable for statutory damages, amounting to as much as $150,000." [1]

This whole debacle is based on the setting up legislation that effectively removes or severely limits liabilities due from people and/or entities that infringe copyright (on purpose or not), to the point where it all but (in)directly requires authors to register their works with the Copyright & Patents Offices in order to (re)gain fair and just compensation as laid out in previous copyright related treaties; that, in part, is exactly what they protect against, the direct or indirect forced or coerced registration of copyright. In other words, with this new Orphan Works legislation it becomes (in theory) cheaper for entities to infringe (claiming 'due diligence') and pay a minimal fine against Orphan Works, with the 'fault' being placed in the hands of authors for not registering their works - copyright protection previously made no such requirement a necessity.

It's not presented that way, obviously, it's purpose is hidden under the guise of being able to;

"... preserve important parts of our personal and national heritage, without giving a free license to infringe on established copyright protections." [2]

Whilst that quote is in part a bit of a red herring (it suggests 'historical' or 'education' use only) it's the latter half that is of concern from the stand point of the legislation itself; whilst it may have the language in place to 'imply' that it prevents a [sic] "free for all", the exact criteria of prevention are not set in stone nor indeed laid bare for all and sundry to clearly see and succinctly understand, in fact the only criteria that are mentioned translates as a rather open ended "due diligence" which is subject to interpretation and thus (potential) abuse.

Have a read through the following and act as you see fit, even if you don't agree with it, pass the information around, this is a real problem and a real law that is going through the motions that could have wider global implications.

• H.R.5889 - Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Introduced in House) [alt]
• S.2913 - Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Introduced in Senate) [alt]
• Summery - Leahy, Hatch, Berman, Smith Introduce IP Legislation
• CGSociety topic of discussion (additional information)
• Written Statement of Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner on Behalf of the Illustrators’ Partnership of America - this issue was raised in a somewhat sensationlist fashion by an article associated with the IPoA, whilst I don't agree with it having been done that way, it did bring the issue quite dramatically to front face of the greater creative community.

If you want to take action then take a look at the following, a series of sample letters that can be edited and 'personalised' before sending off to your Government representative. It's also suggested that International creative contact their local Gov. representatives and voice their concern from an international perspective.

• Sample letters of protest
• International sample letter of protest

Summer is here, I know because my laptop crashed from the increased temperature we're experiencing at the moment; that's the first (and hopefully, last) time that happened this year. I know why, it's the GFX chip overheating so I finally used this as an excuse to rip open the case of my old Fujitsu Amilo A7620 and finally fix this once and for all (I hope!).

WARNING : Do NOT do this if your laptop is still under warranty as you will void it literally the moment your touch the first screw with your (probably incorrectly sized) screwdriver. Seriously. Don't do it. If you break the machine the manufacturer will be more than happy to take all the cash you have to fix it, especially the big boys (Dell, HP, IBM, Sony, et-al). Also, usual warning about clean hand, static, touching metal case, not touching contact points and so on...

First things first is to take the back off to reveal the innards of the laptop; when doing this make sure you use the right sized screwdriver because there's nothing worse then 'ripping' the screw head slots and making them useless for future repair jobs that may need to be done (screwdriver head slips because of torn metal).

So this is the culprit, the Fujitsu Amilo A7620's ATi Radeon 9000 mobility chipset module (phew!) I don't remember there being quite so much electronic 'stuff' on the AGP version of this I had in my old desktop workhorse (back in the day), but anyway, as you can see the chip itself is exposed, along with the memory modules, that metal 'hook' shape to the left sits on top of the motherboard bridge chip (shown in the image above - the 'silver topped' one, lower middle right).

The Fujitsu Amilo A7620's ATi Radeon 9000 mobility chipset graphics card module

Now the heatsink that sits on top of the ATi 9000 mobile module is this aluminium thing below - which is shown with blue heat compound pads still where they were when it was removed - these basically take up the slack between the heatsink and the chipset because the heatsink itself isn't exactly as firmly anchored over the top of the graphics chip as it would be on it's AGP 'big brother'. So, what laptop manufacturers do is use a 'rubberised' pad that gets squashed and displaced when the headsink is positioned and screwed into place - and here is the source of the overheating / graphics issues; if you look closely at image below (and linked) there is an off centered indentation in the larger pad, which is a result of pressure on the the ATI 9000's chipset, and as you can see it's not positioned correctly, it's only covered about half of the pad, which means the ATI chipset has a good proportion of it's surface exposed to air (remember it's not in contact with the heatsink in any way), and this as we all know, is bad!.

Heatsink and the 'heat compound' pads that make up for bad connection between sink and chip

To illustrate this problem better the image below shows the ATi 9000 mobile chip covered the way it was when the heatsink was put in place at manufacture; as can be seen, almost 50% of the chip remains exposed!

The original positioning of the heatsink compound pad showing almost 50% of the graphics chips exposed to air

That's the source of the overheating crashes, easy to fix though by correctly placing the pad. It's worth mentioning here that the stuff the pads are made from is very easy to 'chip' if you're not careful; although it's 'rubberised' the edges have a tendency to crumble and nick with fingernails so caution is advised, try lifting from the underside rather than grabbing the edges.

Correcting the position and coverage of the heatsink compound pad

Time to put it all back together, heatsink compound pads in correctly positioned, the card back in place on the motherboard and the heatsink screwed over the top. Although the heatsink is quite large there's not much area given over to active cooling by the rotational fan; there are some fins in the exhaust channel but that whole plate tends to heat up, which is a substantially large area that needs to be cooled by the fan.

All done. Other pads place on the ATi module which is then sat back into the laptop motherboard

Heatsink back in place held there by a couple of small screws

Fujitsu laptops aren't the only manufacturers that seem to have issues with overheating (Dell, HP and others), based on the above is it any wonder; the CPU is more often than not taken care of with a copper 'passive/active' heatsink (copper pad with heat 'pipes' leading to a fan cool exhaust grill), the GFX chipset on the other hand, often seems to be over looked - I do wonder what the point is of having 'high end' graphics chips in laptops if manufacturers don't take care to cool them properly; marketing laptop computers as multimedia devices means the GFX chip is going to undergo some reasonably heavy abuse; use a laptop for content creation and game editing (and yes playing games) and you really are flogging the horse for every ounce of power you can get.

Laptop hasn't crashed yet since doing this.

idsoftware announced the other day that they are now in the process of developing Doom 4. As expected no details are available excpet some infernaces about the game being built for PC, XBOX 360 and PS3. It's also more than likely going to be using idtech5 (the engine touted for Rage). They're hiring as a result of this, so get those CV's sent in, if you don't get hired for Rage or new Doom 4, you might find yourself on the Quake Live team.

Thankfully not much has changed in the new version of Trackmania Nations - Forever except for additional content and an interface redesign, in fact, they've made it even easier for novices to get up and running in no time creating their own tracks with the inclusion of a 'Simple' mode.

Create new custom tracks for Trackmania Nations Forever

The latest tutorial added to site walks through the general process of what you need to do to create brand new tracks; and it's very easy to do. So if you want to remove those skidmarks without the need to hire a road crew, read up and lay down your own tarmac!

• Creating tracks (track editing) for Trackmania Nations - Forever

Crazy Bump has finally reached full release with version 1.01 now available for download.

Crazy Bump 1.01 now released

With CrazyBump now being a 'live' product it means that installing and using the app puts you into 'demo' mode (not sure if this is time limited); to get out of this now requires the purchase of a suitable licence; Personal @ $99 and Professional @ $299; Indie developers are encouraged to contact Ryan to discus licences, see here for more details.

At time of writing, previous 'beta' versions seems to be functioning but that will more than likely stop at some point in the future.

• Crazy Bump image to normal map generator