When you think about the black market, I’m sure the majority of you will think of prohibition days.  When alcohol was made illegal, it did two things: It made the bad guys more money, and it put the average joe in a dangerous position while trying to acquire it.  Bring in the 21^stcentury. Sure, there still is a black market… but come on, who is afraid of mobsters anymore? Today, we have a gaming black market. It has been around for years, but will it survive? With more and more games moving towards auction houses, could game companies “tame” the gaming black market?

In the old days of gaming on the internet, we spent most of our online time playing hearts, spades… whatever we could do while connected to the internet. As the years went by, better and better games came about. Then, suddenly, interactive multiplayer games came into the picture. These interactive games, mainly MMORPGS, allowed for characters to pick up and keep randomly generated objects known as “loot”. This evolution of gaming created the black market.

In the eyes of the software companies, the game is only being leased/rented by the end user. You don’t actually have any rights to the game. This is where the market becomes black.  The software companies don’t want you making money of “virtual” goods that are housed on the software or servers of the game you are playing on.  The software companies, at this point, started to get smarter.

Where there is a demand…

The importance of variables in any programming language can’t be emphasised enough. Even if you are a novice, the chances are good that you will have been using variables for quite a while now.

They are the cornerstone of any language and without them we would not be able to accomplish much of anything. However, most of you up until this point have probably only been working with standard variables, variables which can hold single values such as an integer, a single character, or a string of text.

In this tutorial we are going to take a look at a more special type of variable called an array. Arrays can seem quite daunting at first glance but once you get used to working with them you will wonder how you ever managed to program without them.

The reason arrays are special is because they can hold more than one value. Think about this: say you create a variable which contains a line of text like the code below:

Today we live in the age of technology. It seems like everyone owns at least one computer, but few actually know how they work. We hear about Java tutorials and C# programming, but why are these things important?

There has been an increasing demand for those who are proficient in web development. It is a job field that has grown substantially in the past decade, and it is still continuing to flourish with no signs of stopping. Learning a web language is not only a useful skill, but a necessary one. So why, out of all of the available web languages, is Java the most valuable?

·         First off, it is a simple language that is easily learned and well known.

·         Java has been around for awhile now, and has earned its place as one of the pillars of modern day computer architecture. Information on Java is abundant, and ranges from online tutorials to books, such as "Java for Dummies."

Microsoft has now come up with a surface tablet to compete with the Apple iPad. The Surface is the known as the ‘iPad killer’ and ‘Microsoft iPad’. Microsoft has stuck to production of software till date but this is one of its latest hardware devices that is expected to take over the Apple iPad. This is a new challenge posed by Microsoft to Apple.

            The Microsoft Surface saw its official release on 19^th June in the city of Los Angeles. It has made a great first impression and seems to be beginning a new start in the competition between the best tablets in the international market. It has 10.6’’ screen and a magnetic cover that can be used as a keyboard and also as a kickstand in order to place the device upright on tables. There has been a paradigm shift in Microsoft’s policy when it decided to do away with the tile-based Metro theme for its Desktop that is almost a trademark with it.

            There are many features that make the Surface more like a laptop than like a tablet- the most prominent one being the built- in keyboard that will be useful for business customers. As Microsoft Surface employs Windows 8 as an operating system, which is also used in its computers and laptops, it will be a lot easier for customers to switch among their devices.

            The tablet was announced by Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, in Los Angeles at a special press conference. It was hailed to be the first of an entirely new family of a number of devices being created and developed by the company. The Surface has a thickness of 9.3mm and weighs 1.5 pounds. It has a kickstand and keyboard for its cover. It is 0.1 mm thinner than the iPad 3, which is the latest iPad from Apple.