the main problem with SMS confirmation is when you are in another country
my bank ( HSBC Sing )used to use SMS confirmation for transfers but now uses the dongle , but the SMS was a pain as I would have to call and change my number when I changed countries and sim cards.
maybe a secure login from your phone via a wireless data link to receive a confirmation code - maybe have it interrogate the IMEI of your phone to authenticate the device - though the mobile computers with phone capabilities will be next in the firing line to be compromised.
Not only that, but SMS is also an unreliable no-time-guarantee service. People seem to think that their SMS always arrives in a minute after they send it, it will always do that. However, I can tell you, when you make that purchase you need to make, the SMS will fail. Maybe it'll take an hour to come through. Maybe you won't see it for days. Maybe it won't come through at all. And it'll happen on the day you forgot to pay a bill and have to pay right then and there before they close for business.
Heck, if that's the case, you might as well use e-mail. It usually arrives a minute after someone sends it, right? But people also know email can sometimes take its own sweet time and arrive hours/days after it was sent. Even if there was no transient error condition anywhere.
Then there's people like me who don't carry their phone with them all the time because they want some privacy, and let voicemail get it (cellphones have only become "essential" within the past decade or so. We survived without them despite them being available for over half a century.) Sure it'll save me a lot of money, and hey, maybe going Dutch would be more fun. "Sorry guys, but I don't have my phone... maybe next time!"
That's really gonna help keep the game out of the office LANs isn't it?
One of the great things about the first 'Craft was being able to install and play either single-player or LAN-based multi from a copied disk. How many offices lost hours and hours of productivity to that feature?
On a related topic - I'm not too happy about the battle.net multiplayer for another reason. Why connect to some distance server for all that traffic when the overhead could be kept on the local LAN for strictly local gameplay? Especially when the game "checks in" on installation, which presumably would prevent rampant theft.
Hell, StarCraft worked on NT 4. That made it one of the few games that actually worked on NT, and considering NT's deployment on office LANs, was one of the few games you could play on an office PC. That alone meant many wasted hours in computer laps and offices.
As for the no LAN play - that's a somewhat big deal. Blizzard better be working on a way to get battle.net working so firewalls are a non-issue period. Getting a few people together for beer 'n' gaming would suck otherwise if all the time is wasted getting the router configured for starcraft 2. After 5 minutes, we'd abandon our laptops on the floor and play Xbox or something.
Another place would be at an airport... set up some ad-hoc wifi network, and game with your friends you're travelling with. Given Blizzard's notoriously low system requirements, it probably will play great on the low end netbooks. BUt if everyone has to pay for wifi service, ugh. Hell, cross-country roadtrips, too. You probably can get it working between cars...
Yes, all of this. Also, apparently the GPS chip inside the iPhone isn't "good enough" to do turn-by-turn navigation, so the cradle that TomTom sells has a chip inside it that is better suited. Now, this might be a big fat lie, since the app will work without the cradle albeit not as well if the marketing literature is to be believed.
Given there are many more navigation apps in the App Store (MobileNavigator for one), I think the GPS chip in the iPhone is "good enough". It uses aGPS to get fast time to first fix (seconds, since the almanac can be transferred via AGPS faster than downloading it from the satellites).
No, the reason for the enhanced GPS cradle is twofold - firstly, the iPhone doesn't have advanced GPS features like WAAS support, and most importantly, you don't need an iPhone. The latter is important - for TomTom's app can work on the iPod Touch which lacks GPS. So now, if you don't have an iPhone (for whatever reason - hate AT&T, what have you), you can use your Touch in your car. Plus, the iPhone's speaker isn't that loud, so a nice loud speaker for directions, and if it supports voice command, the Touch needs a microphone.
TomTom's niche will be the millions of iPod Touches that were formerly cut out.
The PROPER way to do it is to change the law, but it won't get changed retroactively unless this particular case gets all the way to the supreme court. Plus, it's not in Microsoft's best interests to fight a court case and then turn around and make it easier for their competitors. That doesn't make any sense.
Plus, MS is fighting for SOME patent reform, but they firmly believe that if you invent something you should be able to capitalize on it. So they don't actually want the laws to go away, which is what a supreme court ruling COULD effectively do depending on how the justices understood the scope. They just want certain parts to be changed, leaving the rest intact. That would be a tricky case to argue, just as it would be a tricky law to get passed.
So the only logical thing left is to do anything you can think of to get out of this case, and leave the mess there for your competitors until you get a decent amount of patent reform that works the way you want it to do. So they chose that and basically told the jury - this law sucks and it's stupid, so just let us ignore it, mkay?
Or use court cases to cause the people in power to squirm uneasily.
Can't sell WOrd? Stop selling to universities and governments immediately, like, now. Government IT and higher-education departments aren't going to instantly switch to OpenOffice or other word processor immediately. And when some senator's kids can't buy a computer and the required software they need for their classes (i.e., Word - fat chance convincing them of OpenOffice unless it's a technical major), things get moving pretty fast.
It's why that Blackberry patent case, NTP said to shut down the Blackberry network, EXCEPT to government employees (and probably contractors). You don't want Washington to look too closely at laws that caused them to give up their toys.
Uh, no thanks. The couple percent the CC companies charge is small insurance to make sure that joes website is not able to go in and clear out my checking and/or savings accounts. Unless you are going to go with something like one time card numbers with set transaction limits which is too difficult for most people to grasp.
The interesting thing is, direct debit here has merchants charging extra for it. Buy something, show your debit card, ding, $0.25 more is automatically added. (CC merchant accounts forbid this).
It's stupid really, considering handling cash costs money. If you're a small business, cash is a minor risk and inconvenience and yes, it's probably cheaper than credit/debit (think corner stores). But as you get bigger, the costs of handling cash get bigger, faster, and it's often cheaper to handle credit/debit. Yet debits still charge extra. (Think about it - you have to have cashiers trained to handle cash (opening the drawer, counting, making sure the tapes are accurate, closing the drawer, and hoping your difference between tapes and actual is small and/or positive (more cash in drawer than register says), plus all the times when you need to borrow a coin roll because you needed more quarters than supplied, etc. At the end of the day, you have to drop it at the bank. On big release days, you may have to hire an armored car because you're takings are huge. Those big splashy game release days can bring in $50k+ per store in cash (not credit/debit) which has to be deposited at the bank, so a car has to be hired to do the trip, and all the individual book-keeping inbetween).
And there's the whole "credit cards have legal protections, while debit cards is between you and the bank" deal.
The possibility of setting up 'free/cheap cell phone access points' so people can bypass att, verizon, etc.?
Not necessarily bypass, but femtocells are poised to be the next mobile revolution. These are tiny little "cell towers" that backhaul over your broadband. Depending on the femtocell, you can have an air interface of special wifi, wimax, or even regular cell signalling. The latter designed so the carrier can reserve those channels as low-power cell tower sites.
The benefit for you, the owner, is free airtime (you're paying for the backhaul), signal if your area has poor coverage, and free 3G data connectivity. The carriers benefit by having spot signal coverage in poor areas. Businesses will be the main benefactor, besides offering customers cheap cell calls/cheap data coverage, they can push benefits to those in the local area (e.g., coupons, deals, etc). It's just like wifi service at coffeeshops - except instead of the laptop-toting crowd, you can offer it to the majority holding cellphones.
Fast forward to today and, honest truth, I was THIS CLOSE to buying a pair of iPhones for the coolness and opted not to because of the way those NON TECHNICAL CUNTS who run things opted to SUCK THE COCK of AT&T rather than being true geeks.
Obviously, I didn't buy the phones. Have a jailbroken iPod touch for Google Voice and future cool Bluetooth stuff but I'm saddened that I have to go off the grid for coolness when, back in the day, Apple == Cool.
And yet, you didn't bother buy an iPhone, on the no-contract price and unlock it yourself? Or, buy a factory-unlocked iPhone (imported, but it's the Internet...)? Hell, I don't think you need to be a real techno wizard to use the jailbreak and unlock tools... after all, you already jailbroke your touch. Yes, it costs more, and the imported ones are even pricier, but that's never stopped people before.
The only thing the iPhone can't do is have 3G on T-Mobile, but that's more of a physical limitation than anything (T-Mobile's 3G frequencies are different and incompatible).
While i applaud companies that refund the microsoft tax, i do sort of see where lenovo is coming from. If i buy a car, i can't yank out the back seats and require a refund from the car dealer. It is true i could sell those seats for a profit on ebay, the original dealer would not be required to refund me the cost of the seats. In fact, it could be assumed that you pay $2000 for the laptop hardware and they throw in windows for free.
Except, the car seats you're free to sell them on eBay, if the dealer refuses to take them back. Which is probably why the dealer may refuse, because any reasonable person would go and sell them.
With OEM versions of Windows, you cannot resell it. In fact, the OEM versions are tied to the hardware and cannot be installed on any other machine, even the same model. The license is only good for that one PC. That sticker on the case with the CD Key is a fake, too. If you try to activate Windows with it, you'll have to call Microsoft.
At some point, the mindset started to skew towards truth. People with a stake in it started trying to make it respectable. At around that time, there were a large volume of articles online and off about how Wikipedia can't be sourced in research or considered a good source of information and whatnot. Looking back, it's pretty apparent the truth movement was a result of all the publicity.
The thing is, WIkipedia can't be sourced. Just like Britannica can't be sourced either. Encyclopedias are never primary source material for research. They're useful to lookup some bit of knowledge, but if you want in-depth coverage, no matter how well done the article, it's still not source material. If one is doing research, there is nothing wrong with using an encyclopedia - it's a great way to get a background to refine your search, as well as to get the source material.
As for whether it's a good source of material, if you're not going to check the sources, then any encyclopedia is suspect. Using an encyclopedia for information you need to be accurate is similar to asking your friend (or coworker, etc) what the President said about the economy in his speech. You'll probably get a good summary, but if you're going to stake something on it (e.g., your life savings), you might want to actually see for yourself what was actually said - summaries can miss important tidbits.
You're a Solver, and statistically you do die a lot from falling. Everyone does. You're probably not noticing it, because the rate in the article was ridiculously high. 70% or so, IIRC, so it would likely seem normal.
So can we take this data as proof of the annoyance of jumping puzzles in games? With all the chasms one has to cross (or other items to jump across), it's a wonder the world doesn't fall apart. That, and it seems we'll need mechanical augmentation to make it across the chasms that'll take over the world as we go about our lives.
the Games for Windows BS was all about bring live to the PC and there were talks about bringing it to Win Mobile devices too. As far as I know, no Win mobile device is live capable and Games for Windows failed and I don't expect that to change.
Originally, the intent of LIVE was to bring together a way for people to get together for multiplayer games. Sure you have the solution that people used until then (one of the million "server browsers" and OOB communications to arrange a server/time to meet up), but LIVE is used so you add your friends, and can spontaneously play a game if you happen to be online together without worrying about server or other crap. Invite them to your game, and go play.
Games for Windows is different. Games for Windows is a certification mark, like "Designed for Windows", "PlaysForSure", and the like. As a certification, it carries certain requirements, notably the game must support the Xbox360 controller as a valid input mechanism. Games for Windows LIVE is a step up, which means that it uses the LIVE service for multiplayer gaming/stat tracking/multiple player play (the latter meaning you and your sibling/spouse/friend/coworker/etc can play the same game, but on a different "profile" so your save games don't collide, when they lose it doesn't affect your stats, etc).
Aa for Steam and LIVE requirements - it means the game was probably published with LIVE service in mind (it's just a few libraries you add to your build). Then the publisher decided it would be best if they not only sold their own retail box version, but also offered it up in Steam. Valve offers what's effectively an executable wrapper that will take an existing product and make it compatible with Steam without integrating Steam into the source. End result is you need your Steam account (to ensure you "own" a copy of the game), but then the game requires LIVE because it was originally coded that way. The retail boxed version probably doesn't have the Steam requirement. (I'm guessing the workflow is the developer releases the product to the publisher, who then adds the CD/DVD DRM and presses the discs for the retail build. For Steam, the publisher takes the product and then adds the Steam DRM and publishes it to the Steam service).
The other LIVE thing where you have to have an account is somewhat strange, since proper sites (like Bungie) use the LIVE login mechanism (part of the "one ID to rule them all" passport goal, and they can automatically link your LIVE account with their services to use your LIVE/passport/hotmail/etc. login.
And Games for Windows LIVE games should allow you to create a local profile that doesn't require any account creation. You just can't play multiplayer with it (probably the biggest downside since moving save games from a local LIVE profile to the networked LIVE profile requires moving files around...). Microsoft updates the LIVE clients often, so your game may be using an old one...
If I may ask, is the Engine Control more chaotic because the "secret sauce" is in the physical parts? Like how Boeing and Airbus's trade secrets are all located in the wings and not the main body of the aircraft?
That I think is the reason. Think across a line of printers. Home printers have it somewhat simple (start heating up fuser, monitor temperatures, activate mechanism to feed paper, output data to laser and feed toner, etc). But a corporate printer adds in duplexers, multiple pages in-flight (often when one page is being flipped in the duplexer, the drum is free for another page to be printed, then the reverse side of the page in the duplexer, then the other page if flipped, and another page loaded...), etc. Add in multiple uses of the engine pieces simultaneously (oh, you're printing AND using the ADF to scan in?) and it gets chaotic fast. (Home MFPs often just do one at a time).
Oh yeah, and engine control is an analog process that's highly event driven - you can't activate a motor for X seconds and leave it that that - you have to use sensors to detect where everything is in the process. A piece of paper may take longer to load, or be thicker and the motors feed it in slower... or it's special paper and requires special handling. And maybe the first sheet is special, the rest in flight are normal, or another paper tray is to be used, etc.
I want the nextgen consoles to have a standby or hibernate mode like a Windows box. I would no longer have to issue fatwas against game designers who put save points three hours apart.
Thank you! I've been saying that for years.
As an side: if you're willing to wait a generation or so, emulators provide universal save points as well as many other convenient features.
As everyone has mentioned, current-gen portable systems have had this feature for awhile now.
BUt I would really wish my Xbox360 or PS3 had it. Portable systems having it is obvious (save points are never positioned at a convenient point in one's commute, free time, or whenever it's played...), but at-home systems could use it too. Pause works, but do you really want to leave a console there consuming 100-200W of power when you're going for dinner or something (and what if you get delayed or otherwise occupied, so you have to leave it on a whole day?)? Save points usually aren't conveniently stationed to one's game time, either.
Hell, given the storage of the Xbox360 and PS3, you can implement it as save states, so you don't have to come back to the game immediately, but later on (maybe with an intervening game or activity - e.g., watch a movie).
Xb0x360 and PS3 all run an OS, and I know the Xbox360 runs games in user mode (not sure about PS3), so I'm sure it can do the sleep/hibernate thing a la computers these days.
The garden is already here. I don't know if there will be anything bigger than Twitter or Facebook, or how long they'll last but they will undoubtedly go down in history next to Email and IRC as far as breakthrough Internet communication methods. They're big enough now that they won't be going away soon. You won't tear half the population away from either just by building the same thing and saying, "here, this one's open." They don't care. Social networking is here to stay and Facebook and Twitter let them do what they want to do.
Somehow I disagree. Twitter and Facebook are the fad of the moment. There have been other fads that were "going to take over the world" and have since died down. There will be new fads that are coming up. Earliest might've been Geocities, and now it's dead. What about recent history? There was the MySpace fad where everyone had a page on it and crap, but that seems to have died down now. Then there was the whole Second Life thing and everyone was jumping in on it. Hell, the only thing Facebook can claim was sanity in a time when MySpace was going nuts, but that was when Facebook was restricted membership.
It's the reason Facebook is trying to be the be-all and end-all of places. They know that there's nowhere to go but down, so the best way to keep the train rolling is getting people to stay. Things like web apps (well, games at the moment, but someone will probably try to write the next "web operating system" and "web office suite" for Facebook) are popular. Hell, Facebook may be the next AOL. Only a matter of time when it will have webmail and other stuff, or even a "facebook browser".
Sure, they can. If your cable box supports it, they could enable analog output degradation and scale the analog outputs down to fractional resolution. There's only one way to record HDTV content that is guaranteed to be unstoppable: an HDCP stripper with an HDMI capture card....
Already solved. Hauppage HD-PVR, with a HD Fury 2. The HD Fury 2 converts HDMI (up to 1080p, but the HD-PVR only does 1080i), WITH HDCP, to component video. It's designed for older TVs that have component video (or VGA) inputs to accept HDMI, but it works with an HD-PVR.
HDCP ensures that you can't get a degraded image unless the HD Fury's keys are revoked.
Might want to stock up on a few while they're still legal.
The problem, at least in the US, is that the FCC mandated a Firewire interface, but they didn't mandate TVs to have a Firewire input. A few older Mitsubishi and Sony HDTVs had Firewire inputs, but those are the only ones. HDMI is by far the preferred interface now. I know a few people use the Firewire output from their cable boxes to record, but I'd guess it's almost nobody.
Actually, Sharp TVs did, too. I suspect most Japanese TVs had Firewire inputs, and even support Firewire control of the source. (Interestingly, the TV mentioned it for Blu-Ray players, even though at the time, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was just released...).
I guess the Japanese really invested in the whole Firewire thing, probably as a way of connecting their camcorders to their TVs, and being able to remotely control the camcorder through Firewire control. One bus to rule them all - it even describes how to chain devices together so you can control multiple players from the TV's Firewire input.
Yes, yes and more yes. The one thing I've always wanted in a keyboard. No more walk/run modifier key or jerky steering in driving/flying games. Yay!
No, it'll be perfect for Emacs users. Now they can add "light press", "medium press", "hard press", "whacked key" to the list of available modifiers! Think of how much more productive they can be now that they increased the number of modifiers available. Now every function will be able to be mapped to a keystroke or a set of them. E.g., whack Q 5 times to quit.
Has anyone mentioned that entering music via the keyboard is also an option now? (I kid, I kid...)
Normally Apple is on a totally different playing field from any competition... Not here, and it will be interesting to see how they deal with this.:) I am betting lawyers and politicians.
Unfortunately, that is true. For a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch can be trivially enabled to pirate App Store (the official Apple one) apps. Jailbreaking won't get you the ability to install pirated apps, but it's trivial to do it (basically you enable a new repository, which involves maybe 5 or 6 taps and a bit of typing, then another 4 taps or so to install the required tool).
The only interesting thing is, considering how easy it is to pirate real App Store apps, how long until Cydia gets locked down to prevent people from doing the same to its paid apps? RIght now it isn't much of a problem because the vast majority of Cydia apps are free...
At 3 minutes to load each page, no-one is going to click through 20 times.
Well, the thing most people do if they don't want to wait is, open in a new tab! I saw 23 links along the bottom, one for each page (except the first), doesn't mean you can't middle-click them all and while they load, you read the first one.
Most browsers should handle 24 open tabs quite easily.
The first time a company attempts shenanigans like this, there's an uproar. Then they wait a while, for some of the people to get used to the idea, or apathetic, or both, and then attempt it again.
Too much hue and cry the second time results in a third repetition, with a slightly longer cycle. Process repeats until implementation.
In-game ads have been around for ages. We just don't notice them because they don't tend to call out to themselves.
I think the most amusing one I've run into was in the latest Transformers game - fighting the level "boss" and I noticed that half oa building was plastered in an odd red-and-white banner. (Not too unusual, since there's plenty of other buildings with banners textured on them, but this was notable enough to serve as a landmark, while the rest were some blurry unknown thing). I didn't realize it was an ad until I killed the boss and the cutscene played (in-engine), and I noticed the red-and-white banner was actually an ad. Or looked very familiar. I had to get back into that level to check (it only was on one building, hence being able to locate it was easy since I used it as a landmark). Taking a good look, I saw it was an ad for the local cellphone carrier (Rogers) advertising... Android (with Google!) phones.
Big fighting robots need Android-running phones... it only makes sense!
But he did succeed in causing quite a bit of frequency interference: ATC still operates on AM, so there is no "capture" effect as with FM, where the strongest station overrides weaker stations. Simultaneous transmissions are garbled, so "Say again" becomes a very automatic response in those situations (hell, I still use that phrase today...old habits die hard).
You *DO* realize that's why aviation still uses AM, right? The FM capture effect, when it happens, happens spontaneously, and there's no way to know it's happening. If you "step on" someone on the FM band, it's possible to just continue on with a very wierd instruction. And given that a plane may be in-between you and the one you're talking to, someone may get a garbled transmission that gets dangerous. Unless you catch the fact that the voice changes, you'll never know.
On AM, you'll get the warble, which basically means the transmission gets stepped on and alerts everyone to the collision. (Sometimes, the ATC tower is just powerful enough that even stepped on, you can make out what's being said). But the FM capture effect is very dangerous since the "most powerful signal" can be the plane flying beside you.
If your idiot was standing near the runway, he could easily send a "cleared to takeoff" that's only heard by that pilot, while ATC is sending "cleared to land" to the plane in the air.
it has to be rare and desirable to be a collector's item. I don't think the "Sony iPod" my friend bought back from Taiwan will be able to sell that high, even though it's pretty rare.
I don't think OQO is rare and desirable enough to demand 6.5K. Someone who is paying this amount of money either has a very specific reason to do so I think.
An OQO is pretty rare. They were expensive computers in their day, and still have the distinction as the smallest complete x86-compatible PC ever made. (You can get pico-ITC boards smaller than an OQO, but you'll need to add storage, RAM, screen and power...). Heck, you could make it the smallest Hackintosh in the world.
The OQO 02+ is considered very desirable as it upgrades several annoying components on the OQO 02 - the CPU is better (Intel Atom vs. Via C7). The OLED version had more RAM (2GB vs 1GB), and the SSD as an option. The "normal" OQO 02+ (the one that went for $4.5k) qualified for the Microsoft XP Home license too (the netbook discounted cost).
Either way, they were also the cheapest OQOs if they were released, with the OLED one starting around $1.5k. Upgrade to an SSD and you'd have a pocketable PC that you could do iTunes, VLC, full desktop Ubuntu, VMWare, Visual Studio, what have you. Or hell, why argue about Flash support, when you can run full Firefox with flash?
I have an 02, and wanted to buy an 02+. But given OQO is out of business these days, oh well. I won't part with that much cash for an unsupported piece of equipment I intend to use. All I can hope for is the upcoming Archos 9 (running Windows 7) will be small enough to be hand-carried. But pocketing a
Don't people specifically BUY low jack for laptops, or does it come pre installed and you pay to activate it?
It clearly has bugs, but I thought the hard/impossible to remove was considered a feature of the software?
YOu can buy it, but you can also get it pre-installed. Dell offers it as part of the extended warranty in Canada for their laptops. I presume other manufacturers have similar things going where either you get service "prepaid" or discounted service rates.
The reason for the BIOS part is that if you reinstall Windows, LoJack automatically reinstalls itself. Not too sure how it does it, but the BIOS does something to put it back on the hard disk...
Could it really only be $15? I would like to purchase a copy of XP for running in VMWare, but just going out and buying a copy is over $100. It's too much, considering I can get a whole PC with Windows preinstalled for under $300. (Maybe XP Pro isn't the cheapest version, but don't the cheaper versions lack some basic things like Remote Desktop?)
It can, provided your PC meets certain specifications. Windows XP for Ultra Low-Cost-PC (yes, that's it's name!) can be had for about $15 for OEMs. It's just XP Home (XP pro is no longer sold, and copies you can buy are old stock).
But there are limitations to what can qualify. I believe the CPU has to be 2GHz or less, 1GB of RAM or less, 160GB of hard disk or less (or something like 16GB SSD), a 10" screen or smaller (don't know if there's a resolution limit), amongst others. There's a reason why all the netbooks you see on the market seem to be very similar spec-wise. The limits did get revised (the hard drive was bumped from 120GB to 160GB), but that's what you have to meet in order to qualify. Plus I'm sure it's only available to OEMs who purchase a certain quantity of licenses...
FYI, in Halo 3, completing certain achievements unlocks new armor which can be used in multiplayer. While the different armor pieces have no practical effect, some certainly look cooler than the standards.
Someone below me also said that achievements are a way of adding content without really adding content, or saying it a different way, they add replay value. This is very true, at least for me, but I suspect for many others. Even after I complete the standard storyline of the game, I'll go back through and pick up as many of the achievements as my schedule and spouse reasonably permit me to. Why? I don't know. I guess its just another challenge.
But, achievements != gamer score. In Halo 3, there are several "0" score achievements (vidmaster ones, I think) - you still have to do them to unlock content, but they add 0 points to your gamer score. And there are legitimate ways to increase your gamerscore (play the game), as well as some quasi-legit ways of doing it (getting together with a bunch of people to get the multiplayer achievements). Quasi only because they're not really in the spirit of the whole thing, but for those of us who suck, it's the only way. (Basically, if it's something like "kill 5 players in 4 seconds", you'll have 5 people line up, and you pick them off one by one, then you line up, get killed by the rest so they get the achievement too).
Still, that's nothing for the gamer score - Microsoft doles out 1000 points per pressed DVD game, and 250 points per Live Arcade game (how the developer divvies them up is up to the developer, and you can issue 0 point achievements), plus 250 extra points per DLC.
Achievements are great - I've replayed Halo 3 a couple of times to get the campaign ones (and the gamerscore boost has moved me from the bottom amongst my personal friends, to the middle). But this article is about gamer score, that little number beside your name that doesn't do anything at all. At least achievements can unlock stuff. Gamer score, you can't do anything with other than brag.
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Not only that, but SMS is also an unreliable no-time-guarantee service. People seem to think that their SMS always arrives in a minute after they send it, it will always do that. However, I can tell you, when you make that purchase you need to make, the SMS will fail. Maybe it'll take an hour to come through. Maybe you won't see it for days. Maybe it won't come through at all. And it'll happen on the day you forgot to pay a bill and have to pay right then and there before they close for business.
Heck, if that's the case, you might as well use e-mail. It usually arrives a minute after someone sends it, right? But people also know email can sometimes take its own sweet time and arrive hours/days after it was sent. Even if there was no transient error condition anywhere.
Then there's people like me who don't carry their phone with them all the time because they want some privacy, and let voicemail get it (cellphones have only become "essential" within the past decade or so. We survived without them despite them being available for over half a century.) Sure it'll save me a lot of money, and hey, maybe going Dutch would be more fun. "Sorry guys, but I don't have my phone... maybe next time!"
Hell, StarCraft worked on NT 4. That made it one of the few games that actually worked on NT, and considering NT's deployment on office LANs, was one of the few games you could play on an office PC. That alone meant many wasted hours in computer laps and offices.
As for the no LAN play - that's a somewhat big deal. Blizzard better be working on a way to get battle.net working so firewalls are a non-issue period. Getting a few people together for beer 'n' gaming would suck otherwise if all the time is wasted getting the router configured for starcraft 2. After 5 minutes, we'd abandon our laptops on the floor and play Xbox or something.
Another place would be at an airport... set up some ad-hoc wifi network, and game with your friends you're travelling with. Given Blizzard's notoriously low system requirements, it probably will play great on the low end netbooks. BUt if everyone has to pay for wifi service, ugh. Hell, cross-country roadtrips, too. You probably can get it working between cars...
Given there are many more navigation apps in the App Store (MobileNavigator for one), I think the GPS chip in the iPhone is "good enough". It uses aGPS to get fast time to first fix (seconds, since the almanac can be transferred via AGPS faster than downloading it from the satellites).
No, the reason for the enhanced GPS cradle is twofold - firstly, the iPhone doesn't have advanced GPS features like WAAS support, and most importantly, you don't need an iPhone. The latter is important - for TomTom's app can work on the iPod Touch which lacks GPS. So now, if you don't have an iPhone (for whatever reason - hate AT&T, what have you), you can use your Touch in your car. Plus, the iPhone's speaker isn't that loud, so a nice loud speaker for directions, and if it supports voice command, the Touch needs a microphone.
TomTom's niche will be the millions of iPod Touches that were formerly cut out.
Or use court cases to cause the people in power to squirm uneasily.
Can't sell WOrd? Stop selling to universities and governments immediately, like, now. Government IT and higher-education departments aren't going to instantly switch to OpenOffice or other word processor immediately. And when some senator's kids can't buy a computer and the required software they need for their classes (i.e., Word - fat chance convincing them of OpenOffice unless it's a technical major), things get moving pretty fast.
It's why that Blackberry patent case, NTP said to shut down the Blackberry network, EXCEPT to government employees (and probably contractors). You don't want Washington to look too closely at laws that caused them to give up their toys.
The interesting thing is, direct debit here has merchants charging extra for it. Buy something, show your debit card, ding, $0.25 more is automatically added. (CC merchant accounts forbid this).
It's stupid really, considering handling cash costs money. If you're a small business, cash is a minor risk and inconvenience and yes, it's probably cheaper than credit/debit (think corner stores). But as you get bigger, the costs of handling cash get bigger, faster, and it's often cheaper to handle credit/debit. Yet debits still charge extra. (Think about it - you have to have cashiers trained to handle cash (opening the drawer, counting, making sure the tapes are accurate, closing the drawer, and hoping your difference between tapes and actual is small and/or positive (more cash in drawer than register says), plus all the times when you need to borrow a coin roll because you needed more quarters than supplied, etc. At the end of the day, you have to drop it at the bank. On big release days, you may have to hire an armored car because you're takings are huge. Those big splashy game release days can bring in $50k+ per store in cash (not credit/debit) which has to be deposited at the bank, so a car has to be hired to do the trip, and all the individual book-keeping inbetween).
And there's the whole "credit cards have legal protections, while debit cards is between you and the bank" deal.
And yet, you didn't bother buy an iPhone, on the no-contract price and unlock it yourself? Or, buy a factory-unlocked iPhone (imported, but it's the Internet...)? Hell, I don't think you need to be a real techno wizard to use the jailbreak and unlock tools... after all, you already jailbroke your touch. Yes, it costs more, and the imported ones are even pricier, but that's never stopped people before.
The only thing the iPhone can't do is have 3G on T-Mobile, but that's more of a physical limitation than anything (T-Mobile's 3G frequencies are different and incompatible).
Except, the car seats you're free to sell them on eBay, if the dealer refuses to take them back. Which is probably why the dealer may refuse, because any reasonable person would go and sell them.
With OEM versions of Windows, you cannot resell it. In fact, the OEM versions are tied to the hardware and cannot be installed on any other machine, even the same model. The license is only good for that one PC. That sticker on the case with the CD Key is a fake, too. If you try to activate Windows with it, you'll have to call Microsoft.
The thing is, WIkipedia can't be sourced. Just like Britannica can't be sourced either. Encyclopedias are never primary source material for research. They're useful to lookup some bit of knowledge, but if you want in-depth coverage, no matter how well done the article, it's still not source material. If one is doing research, there is nothing wrong with using an encyclopedia - it's a great way to get a background to refine your search, as well as to get the source material.
As for whether it's a good source of material, if you're not going to check the sources, then any encyclopedia is suspect. Using an encyclopedia for information you need to be accurate is similar to asking your friend (or coworker, etc) what the President said about the economy in his speech. You'll probably get a good summary, but if you're going to stake something on it (e.g., your life savings), you might want to actually see for yourself what was actually said - summaries can miss important tidbits.
So can we take this data as proof of the annoyance of jumping puzzles in games? With all the chasms one has to cross (or other items to jump across), it's a wonder the world doesn't fall apart. That, and it seems we'll need mechanical augmentation to make it across the chasms that'll take over the world as we go about our lives.
Originally, the intent of LIVE was to bring together a way for people to get together for multiplayer games. Sure you have the solution that people used until then (one of the million "server browsers" and OOB communications to arrange a server/time to meet up), but LIVE is used so you add your friends, and can spontaneously play a game if you happen to be online together without worrying about server or other crap. Invite them to your game, and go play.
Games for Windows is different. Games for Windows is a certification mark, like "Designed for Windows", "PlaysForSure", and the like. As a certification, it carries certain requirements, notably the game must support the Xbox360 controller as a valid input mechanism. Games for Windows LIVE is a step up, which means that it uses the LIVE service for multiplayer gaming/stat tracking/multiple player play (the latter meaning you and your sibling/spouse/friend/coworker/etc can play the same game, but on a different "profile" so your save games don't collide, when they lose it doesn't affect your stats, etc).
Aa for Steam and LIVE requirements - it means the game was probably published with LIVE service in mind (it's just a few libraries you add to your build). Then the publisher decided it would be best if they not only sold their own retail box version, but also offered it up in Steam. Valve offers what's effectively an executable wrapper that will take an existing product and make it compatible with Steam without integrating Steam into the source. End result is you need your Steam account (to ensure you "own" a copy of the game), but then the game requires LIVE because it was originally coded that way. The retail boxed version probably doesn't have the Steam requirement. (I'm guessing the workflow is the developer releases the product to the publisher, who then adds the CD/DVD DRM and presses the discs for the retail build. For Steam, the publisher takes the product and then adds the Steam DRM and publishes it to the Steam service).
The other LIVE thing where you have to have an account is somewhat strange, since proper sites (like Bungie) use the LIVE login mechanism (part of the "one ID to rule them all" passport goal, and they can automatically link your LIVE account with their services to use your LIVE/passport/hotmail/etc. login.
And Games for Windows LIVE games should allow you to create a local profile that doesn't require any account creation. You just can't play multiplayer with it (probably the biggest downside since moving save games from a local LIVE profile to the networked LIVE profile requires moving files around...). Microsoft updates the LIVE clients often, so your game may be using an old one...
That I think is the reason. Think across a line of printers. Home printers have it somewhat simple (start heating up fuser, monitor temperatures, activate mechanism to feed paper, output data to laser and feed toner, etc). But a corporate printer adds in duplexers, multiple pages in-flight (often when one page is being flipped in the duplexer, the drum is free for another page to be printed, then the reverse side of the page in the duplexer, then the other page if flipped, and another page loaded...), etc. Add in multiple uses of the engine pieces simultaneously (oh, you're printing AND using the ADF to scan in?) and it gets chaotic fast. (Home MFPs often just do one at a time).
Oh yeah, and engine control is an analog process that's highly event driven - you can't activate a motor for X seconds and leave it that that - you have to use sensors to detect where everything is in the process. A piece of paper may take longer to load, or be thicker and the motors feed it in slower... or it's special paper and requires special handling. And maybe the first sheet is special, the rest in flight are normal, or another paper tray is to be used, etc.
As everyone has mentioned, current-gen portable systems have had this feature for awhile now.
BUt I would really wish my Xbox360 or PS3 had it. Portable systems having it is obvious (save points are never positioned at a convenient point in one's commute, free time, or whenever it's played...), but at-home systems could use it too. Pause works, but do you really want to leave a console there consuming 100-200W of power when you're going for dinner or something (and what if you get delayed or otherwise occupied, so you have to leave it on a whole day?)? Save points usually aren't conveniently stationed to one's game time, either.
Hell, given the storage of the Xbox360 and PS3, you can implement it as save states, so you don't have to come back to the game immediately, but later on (maybe with an intervening game or activity - e.g., watch a movie).
Xb0x360 and PS3 all run an OS, and I know the Xbox360 runs games in user mode (not sure about PS3), so I'm sure it can do the sleep/hibernate thing a la computers these days.
Somehow I disagree. Twitter and Facebook are the fad of the moment. There have been other fads that were "going to take over the world" and have since died down. There will be new fads that are coming up. Earliest might've been Geocities, and now it's dead. What about recent history? There was the MySpace fad where everyone had a page on it and crap, but that seems to have died down now. Then there was the whole Second Life thing and everyone was jumping in on it. Hell, the only thing Facebook can claim was sanity in a time when MySpace was going nuts, but that was when Facebook was restricted membership.
It's the reason Facebook is trying to be the be-all and end-all of places. They know that there's nowhere to go but down, so the best way to keep the train rolling is getting people to stay. Things like web apps (well, games at the moment, but someone will probably try to write the next "web operating system" and "web office suite" for Facebook) are popular. Hell, Facebook may be the next AOL. Only a matter of time when it will have webmail and other stuff, or even a "facebook browser".
Already solved. Hauppage HD-PVR, with a HD Fury 2. The HD Fury 2 converts HDMI (up to 1080p, but the HD-PVR only does 1080i), WITH HDCP, to component video. It's designed for older TVs that have component video (or VGA) inputs to accept HDMI, but it works with an HD-PVR.
HDCP ensures that you can't get a degraded image unless the HD Fury's keys are revoked.
Might want to stock up on a few while they're still legal.
Actually, Sharp TVs did, too. I suspect most Japanese TVs had Firewire inputs, and even support Firewire control of the source. (Interestingly, the TV mentioned it for Blu-Ray players, even though at the time, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was just released...).
I guess the Japanese really invested in the whole Firewire thing, probably as a way of connecting their camcorders to their TVs, and being able to remotely control the camcorder through Firewire control. One bus to rule them all - it even describes how to chain devices together so you can control multiple players from the TV's Firewire input.
No, it'll be perfect for Emacs users. Now they can add "light press", "medium press", "hard press", "whacked key" to the list of available modifiers! Think of how much more productive they can be now that they increased the number of modifiers available. Now every function will be able to be mapped to a keystroke or a set of them. E.g., whack Q 5 times to quit.
Has anyone mentioned that entering music via the keyboard is also an option now? (I kid, I kid...)
Unfortunately, that is true. For a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch can be trivially enabled to pirate App Store (the official Apple one) apps. Jailbreaking won't get you the ability to install pirated apps, but it's trivial to do it (basically you enable a new repository, which involves maybe 5 or 6 taps and a bit of typing, then another 4 taps or so to install the required tool).
The only interesting thing is, considering how easy it is to pirate real App Store apps, how long until Cydia gets locked down to prevent people from doing the same to its paid apps? RIght now it isn't much of a problem because the vast majority of Cydia apps are free...
Well, the thing most people do if they don't want to wait is, open in a new tab! I saw 23 links along the bottom, one for each page (except the first), doesn't mean you can't middle-click them all and while they load, you read the first one.
Most browsers should handle 24 open tabs quite easily.
In-game ads have been around for ages. We just don't notice them because they don't tend to call out to themselves.
I think the most amusing one I've run into was in the latest Transformers game - fighting the level "boss" and I noticed that half oa building was plastered in an odd red-and-white banner. (Not too unusual, since there's plenty of other buildings with banners textured on them, but this was notable enough to serve as a landmark, while the rest were some blurry unknown thing). I didn't realize it was an ad until I killed the boss and the cutscene played (in-engine), and I noticed the red-and-white banner was actually an ad. Or looked very familiar. I had to get back into that level to check (it only was on one building, hence being able to locate it was easy since I used it as a landmark). Taking a good look, I saw it was an ad for the local cellphone carrier (Rogers) advertising... Android (with Google!) phones.
Big fighting robots need Android-running phones... it only makes sense!
You *DO* realize that's why aviation still uses AM, right? The FM capture effect, when it happens, happens spontaneously, and there's no way to know it's happening. If you "step on" someone on the FM band, it's possible to just continue on with a very wierd instruction. And given that a plane may be in-between you and the one you're talking to, someone may get a garbled transmission that gets dangerous. Unless you catch the fact that the voice changes, you'll never know.
On AM, you'll get the warble, which basically means the transmission gets stepped on and alerts everyone to the collision. (Sometimes, the ATC tower is just powerful enough that even stepped on, you can make out what's being said). But the FM capture effect is very dangerous since the "most powerful signal" can be the plane flying beside you.
If your idiot was standing near the runway, he could easily send a "cleared to takeoff" that's only heard by that pilot, while ATC is sending "cleared to land" to the plane in the air.
An OQO is pretty rare. They were expensive computers in their day, and still have the distinction as the smallest complete x86-compatible PC ever made. (You can get pico-ITC boards smaller than an OQO, but you'll need to add storage, RAM, screen and power...). Heck, you could make it the smallest Hackintosh in the world.
The OQO 02+ is considered very desirable as it upgrades several annoying components on the OQO 02 - the CPU is better (Intel Atom vs. Via C7). The OLED version had more RAM (2GB vs 1GB), and the SSD as an option. The "normal" OQO 02+ (the one that went for $4.5k) qualified for the Microsoft XP Home license too (the netbook discounted cost).
Either way, they were also the cheapest OQOs if they were released, with the OLED one starting around $1.5k. Upgrade to an SSD and you'd have a pocketable PC that you could do iTunes, VLC, full desktop Ubuntu, VMWare, Visual Studio, what have you. Or hell, why argue about Flash support, when you can run full Firefox with flash?
I have an 02, and wanted to buy an 02+. But given OQO is out of business these days, oh well. I won't part with that much cash for an unsupported piece of equipment I intend to use. All I can hope for is the upcoming Archos 9 (running Windows 7) will be small enough to be hand-carried. But pocketing a
YOu can buy it, but you can also get it pre-installed. Dell offers it as part of the extended warranty in Canada for their laptops. I presume other manufacturers have similar things going where either you get service "prepaid" or discounted service rates.
The reason for the BIOS part is that if you reinstall Windows, LoJack automatically reinstalls itself. Not too sure how it does it, but the BIOS does something to put it back on the hard disk...
It can, provided your PC meets certain specifications. Windows XP for Ultra Low-Cost-PC (yes, that's it's name!) can be had for about $15 for OEMs. It's just XP Home (XP pro is no longer sold, and copies you can buy are old stock).
But there are limitations to what can qualify. I believe the CPU has to be 2GHz or less, 1GB of RAM or less, 160GB of hard disk or less (or something like 16GB SSD), a 10" screen or smaller (don't know if there's a resolution limit), amongst others. There's a reason why all the netbooks you see on the market seem to be very similar spec-wise. The limits did get revised (the hard drive was bumped from 120GB to 160GB), but that's what you have to meet in order to qualify. Plus I'm sure it's only available to OEMs who purchase a certain quantity of licenses...
But, achievements != gamer score. In Halo 3, there are several "0" score achievements (vidmaster ones, I think) - you still have to do them to unlock content, but they add 0 points to your gamer score. And there are legitimate ways to increase your gamerscore (play the game), as well as some quasi-legit ways of doing it (getting together with a bunch of people to get the multiplayer achievements). Quasi only because they're not really in the spirit of the whole thing, but for those of us who suck, it's the only way. (Basically, if it's something like "kill 5 players in 4 seconds", you'll have 5 people line up, and you pick them off one by one, then you line up, get killed by the rest so they get the achievement too).
Still, that's nothing for the gamer score - Microsoft doles out 1000 points per pressed DVD game, and 250 points per Live Arcade game (how the developer divvies them up is up to the developer, and you can issue 0 point achievements), plus 250 extra points per DLC.
Achievements are great - I've replayed Halo 3 a couple of times to get the campaign ones (and the gamerscore boost has moved me from the bottom amongst my personal friends, to the middle). But this article is about gamer score, that little number beside your name that doesn't do anything at all. At least achievements can unlock stuff. Gamer score, you can't do anything with other than brag.