Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
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Jeff Green used to work at Games For Windows magazine before taking a sweet gig at EA , but that little fact won’t silence his criticism of the DRM found in Command and Conquer 4 . He tweeted white-hot rage when, as everyone on the Internet predicted, this “always-on” nonsense worked as intended, and prevented a law-abiding citizen from playing his game. Here are the tweets, hombres: It’s safe to say we’ve been fairly clear in, well, hating all this DRM. It’s very easy to say, “It’s 2010, who doesn’t have their computer constantly connected to the Internet?” You’d be correct, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that people’s Internet connections aren’t reliable enough to require gamers to be 100 percent online for the duration of a gaming session. Your Wi-Fi could go down. (Mine goes down like five times per day. Thanks, D-Link.) You could have Comcast . There could be cosmic rays . The point is, your Internet connection isn’t stable enough to work well with this particular form of DRM. Now, what Mr. Green brings up, that perhaps if we didn’t look at C&C 4 (or Assassin’s Creed II or whatever) as a “single-player game” we wouldn’t not expect to be online. After all, World of Warcraft is an online game, and the second you’re disconnected, you’re booted from the game. No one flips out over that, right? But the very idea that a fairly prominent EA man has publicly questioned the integrity of this type of DRM means all of our complaining is affecting the right people. Keep it up!
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
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When I’m working from home, I have a dual-monitor setup for my PC. Very useful on busy days or for keeping an eye on RSS feeds while watching a movie. On the road (or when my internet craps out, like this morning) I take my MacBook Pro, and while multiple desktops are handy, I sometimes wish I had a second screen for that thing, too. Yeah, it’d be pretty weird to set up a 13-inch LED-backlit secondary screen at a coffee shop — almost as weird as this thing — but anything to get the job done, right? Right. Made by MEDL Technologies, it’s called simply “The Panel” and it’s exactly what it says it is: a secondary screen that uses USB as its display link. There are smaller solutions , of course, but this is the biggest standalone monitor I’ve seen that just runs off USB. It’s also battery-powered, and will run for five hours, which… is good, I guess, but it isn’t clear whether it’s charged by the USB or not. If not… why not? It weighs just over 2 pounds, and at a 1280
Posted by 010081
Tech
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
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There’s no shortage of creepy nerd-related stuff out there. I mean, while Japan’s notorious rape simulators are pretty much the pinnacle of gaming-related perversion, there’s still a lot of weird stuff out there. Remember this sleazy contest ? Now, some enterprising person looked at the internet a little while ago and said to himself (surely him self), “Well now. We have gaming girls like the Frag Dolls, and we have desperate gamers with disposable incomes. And we have cam girls. How can I make these pieces fit together?” Simple. Make a site where desperate gamers pay to watch/play with gamer cam girls! It fits the timeless formula: 1. Put cute girls on internet-connected cameras 2. Profit I’m not convinced this will be anything less than a complete boondoggle, of course. I mean, how can… where will they… how do they expect… oh, forget it. As Oscar-winner Christopher Waltz says in Inglourious Basterds , “What tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.” Or maybe it’s just a way for some girls to put away a few bucks. GameCrush should be launching any second now, so go try it out. Only for the 360, at the moment – pity! [via Crave ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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The beauty of the Internet is that it demands instant analysis of every single development to come out of Peoria. The Nintendo 3DS —out of Kyoto, which is not Peoria, I’m afraid—was announced overnight, time zone permitting. It will debut at E3 in June, and it will forever change the way you and I… do something . Something video game-related, methinks. If one thing’s certain, it does mean that 3D is here to stay. I’m sorry. Say what you will about Avatar , but it made quite a bit of scratch. Then CES came around, in January, and every single TV manufacturer held presentation after presentation, laser light show after laser light show, trumpeting their fancy 3D TVs. None of the TVs are compatible with each other, so if you buy Company A’s TV and your neighbor buys Company B’s, y’all can’t get together to watch the World Cup in 3D—the glasses won’t allow it. The GameCube barely displaced any water—what did it have, those Metroid games, Resident Evil 4 , a couple of Mario games? It did well enough, but compared to the PS2 (and Xbox , I guess) the GameCube was sorta a disappointment. Granted, comparing any other video game system to the PS2 is like comparing a light bulb to the sun, but you can only beat what’s put in front of you. Wii ! Yup, Nintendo got tired of the hardware race, so it slapped a Bluetooth sensor bar to white shelled GameCube, called it Wii, then sat back and let the money a-roll in. It completely changed gaming. Now, rather than relying upon the “hardcores” to buy the latest Earthbound , Nintendo could convince Grandma and Grandpa, and your girlfriend, to play Wii Sports till their arms fall off. You’ll note that it took Sony and Microsoft a few years before they realized, “Hey, this motion control business is quite nifty. Maybe we should get in on it?” And they have! I have no time for motion control—you can pry my mouse and keyboard from my cold, dead hands~!—but clearly there’s money to be made here. If Sony and Microsoft can’t make money selling Fling Paint , then there’s no money to publish things like God of War and Fable . So this 3DS thing (here’s the full English press release )… Nintendo describes it as letting you play games “with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” As someone who wears glasses—I’m blind as a bat, and nowhere near as cuddly—, let me be the nine millionth to say “Obrigado!” The 3D TVs at CES were largely pants, but I did get to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 3D (thanks to some sort of Nvidia trickery ) a few weeks ago. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but if given the option, provided it’s affordable—I’m not buying a $1,000 monitor and glasses and a new video card!—then why not? Nothing wrong, per se, with a little added depth as I try to left-click over a Bad Guy’s face. The 3DS, which should come out around this time next year, will be backwards compatible with your current DS library. My DS library is quite small ( Chrono Trigger and those Final Fantasy remakes), so I could give a toss about backwards compatibility, but I’m sure there’s those of you who have more than a few games, games that you wouldn’t want to “lose” when upgrading to the 3DS. Upgrading may not even be the right word, since the 3DS is totally new hardware. It’s not like going from the DS Lite to the DSi , or from the DSi to the DSi XL . The point is, this is Nintendo saying, “Hi guys! Remember how we made motion control cool, bringing it to the masses? We’re going to do the same thing with 3D now. Kthxbye!” And now we wait for Sony to announce a 3D PSP of some sort…
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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One great thing about the internet is the number of people offering advice. Of course, sometimes you need to take that advice with a grain of salt, but photography advice is usually safe. Case in point; BBC’s Wildlife Magazine published a series of Photo Masterclasses in 2006/2007. The information still holds true now (theory rarely changes) and is definitely worth a read. As a photographer myself, I’m constantly trying to find information of new techniques and practices to make my photos better. That’s why I love it when an organization like the BBC shares information like this on the ‘net. The classes cover the best practices for shooting in many different situations, including everything from shooting plants to shooting in the arctic. They are all available in the PDF format, and you can download them for personal use. I’ve only had time to read a couple of them, but they are very well written and worth your time. [via LifeHacker ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Sunday, March 21st, 2010
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Viliv makes some hot, little portables. That’s a fact. The X70 and S5 touchscreen along with the S7 convertible netboo k are among the best in their respective niche markets. But previously the products were only available from online retailers, which of course limits their visibility from a whole segment of potential customers. Starting Monday though, Best Buy shoppers will be able to pick up the products in store and online. There will even be an instant rebate available on the none-3G modem-equipped models. The $579 S7 will be available with a $50 instant rebate if the buyer signs up for a Sprint Mi-Fi or Overdrive hotspot. That’s of course a nice offer, but the slightly more expensive $649 S7 features a built-in unlocked 3G modem allowing owners to pop-in any ol’ activated SIM card for mobile hotspot-free Internet connectivity. As of writing it doesn’t seem that any Best Buy locations have the portables in stock, but YMMV. Give your local store a quick minute or two before bothering computer associates about when they will be getting their first Viliv shipments. [ Best Buy ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
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I did my taxes recently, and this is the first year that I actually bothered to deduct for all those things that I buy over the year for my job. It was confusing frankly, and I wish I’d read this article before I did it. Hopefully you’ll read this in time to do your deductions correctly, and not make the same mistakes I did (which caused me to miss out on several things I could have claimed). I’m not going to go into all the grisly details, I’ll leave that to the person who actually wrote the article at PCWorld , but the gist of it is this: be careful what you deduct, and how you deduct it. And yes, you can deduct your internet connection (at least part of it) if you are a blogger. Be careful not to write off 100% value on items like computers or phones, as the IRS won’t believe you that you use those things strictly for business purposes.
Posted by 010081
Tech
Friday, March 19th, 2010
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Kudos to Comcast for embracing the year 2009. The nation’s largest—and quite possibly worst —ISP has finally committed itself to deploying 100 mbps broadband beginning this year. That will make the FCC happy, what with the loft goals it set with its National Broadband Plan . It’s also good news for people who know their way around things like Usenet—taps nose like a spy. Will it be affordable, though? The big rollout will happen within the next 12 to 18 months. Most, if not all, of Comcast’s customers will be able to sign up for the super-fast service. You can thank DOCSIS 3.0 for that. Price may be an issue. Right now, Comcast offers 100 mbps down/15 mbps up service to business customers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for $369 per month. There’s no way you’re going to convince residential customers in this economy to shell out nearly $400 a month for Internet access, no matter how fast—that’s the price of two car payments. Now you’d have to figure that not even Comcast would be that silly to charge that kind of money for residential Internet access. I don’t know what’s involved with business-level Internet access at Comcast, but presumably it comes with free ostrich egg omelets once a week. For comparison’s sake, I already have 100 mbps Internet access from Cablevision, an ISP in the New York area. For $100 per month I get 101 (!) mbps down/15 mbps up. I am, in fact, able to max out my connection when using Usenet (I have Newsdemon ). But a fair warning to people who think the Internet is magically going to fly once they hop aboard the 100 mbps train: it won’t. Sites like YouTube are still dog-slow, Gmail isn’t any faster than it is using your regular broadband connection. In a sense, you’re faster than what these sites can handle. That will change over time, of course, but don’t think getting 100 mbps is going to change your life if all you do is check your Facebook and watch the occasional YouTube clip. It’s sorta weird: sites won’t upgrade their capacity until there’s enough people with super-fast connections to make it worth their while, and it may not be worth it to the average person to upgrade, and perhaps pay $100 per month, until it’s worth their while.
Posted by 010081
Tech
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
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Today’s a very important day in the history of me using the Internet, a history that began in late 1996. Ladies and gentleman, I have completely uninstalled AdBlock . I do believe that makes me a man in the Jewish faith, so I’ll be expecting presents from all of you. Like many of you, I first installed AdBlock several years ago, back when the Internet was still reasonably untamed. Pop-ups were the main concern—before I switched to Firefox (well, its progenitor, Phoenix), I’d launch Internet Explorer and find myself besieged with all sorts of absolute nonsense—but then other types of ads started becoming intrusive. Like, they were ruining the entire Internet experience. In steps AdBlock, and bam! The Internet is clean again—I can actually read my favorite Web sites! That was the status quo for a while there, and I’m pretty sure it mirrors many of your experiences. But then sites started to integrate ads into their layout—clever move, gentlemen! Blocking said ads would, instead of making the Internet shiny and pretty, render them completely unreadable. Then there’s the moral issue. Many, if not all, of the sites you read and love (?) are totally free because the sites can turn to Big Company and say, “See? We have X-Amount of readers, and if you’d like to advertise to these people we’ll happily hand over a couple pixels of space for a banner ad or two.” Web sites are cheap-ish to run, but they’re not free, as Ars Technica far more eloquently put it the other day . When you use AdBlock and the like, you’re taking away from the site’s ability to sell adspace to advertisers. Considering nobody wants to pay for things anymore, much less online news… I’m not going to say something terribly dramatic like, “OMG you’re taking food off their table~!” but it does make their lives a little bit harder. And that’s energy that could be put toward making a better site rather than worrying about why all the ad revenue has dried up. I suppose I could have merely chosen to disable it on a per site basis, but I feel more adult this way. See you later, AdBlock. You served me well, but it’s time we go our separate ways.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
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A young man rang Charter Cable to cancel his cable TV connection and maintain his Internet connection. Why? Because cable TV is an anathema to this generation’s vision of media consumption and/or it sucks. So he calls Charter and Charter informs him that he has to pay a $10 no-cable fee and he is told that soon Charter and the rest of the cable companies will control all streaming, thereby rendering all streaming media unusable after “May 1.” Consumerist has his note: At this point, he said he would see what the cost of internet alone was, and said there would be a $10 “no cable TV” fee (sounds like b.s. to me), which would make it $49.95 a month for internet alone. Then he went on to say that he strongly suggested that I keep the tv service because come May 1, all of the online streaming services would be shut down because the cable TV providers are taking over, and that the FCC regulations are changing so that the cable companies will have total control over streaming video. Total control, eh? Sounds fishy. Look: cable companies have cables that come into people’s homes. They can make lots of money offering fat pipes to people who want them. But they don’t. They want to stick to whatever consumption model appeals to them and that model is the the cable channel. Cable channels don’t cost them money to maintain, they don’t have to be up 24/7, and they can sell premium channels and services to rubes who don’t know any better. The Internet is like offering running water to the home. Cable TV is like offering a bottled water service with a special “shower package” for those who want to wash. Which one is more lucrative?