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Submission + - The Android L Update for Nvidia Shield Portable Removes Features

An anonymous reader writes: For those of us who still remember the hobson's choice with the 3.21 update of the PS3 firmware, the most recent update to the Nvidia Shield Portable is eerily similar. The update, which is necessary to run recent games and apps that require Android 5.0 APIs, removes some features from the device, and removes the games that were bundled with the device, Sonic 4 Episode II and The Expendables: ReArmed. Nvidia has stressed that it is an optional update, but how many users have been told for months that the update was coming, some of whom may have bought the device after the update was announced, only to find out now they won't receive all the functionality they paid for? How is it still legal for these companies to advertise and sell a whole product but only deliver part of it?

Comment Re:crimes (Score 1) 1198

Your Constitutional Rights have freed you from morality.

Freed me from morality? How is killing someone EVER the moral thing to do? I don't care what the convicted person did -- killing someone is never the moral thing to do. As many other people have already said, two wrongs don't make a right. "An eye for an eye" is a rather barbaric way of exacting justice. Perhaps I misunderstand what you're getting at here, but I don't see how my constitutional rights free me from morality here at all.

Oklahoma didn't realize anything wouldn't pass muster. They were shocked and horrified by a gruesome sight.

After reading a few other articles on this subject, I don't even think they were shocked and horrified. They've only stayed the other execution for two weeks. Does anyone really think they can conduct a full investigation into what happened here in two weeks?

Comment Re:crimes (Score 1) 1198

Sure, the crime was absolutely horrific, but how does that give the state the right to violate his constitutional and legal rights and torture him to death with an untested method of execution? Obviously Oklahoma realized that what they did wouldn't pass muster, or they'd have gone ahead with the second execution on the schedule for the day.

Comment Re:eh ? (Score 1) 235

They want an injunction to ban the devices the court found to be infringing. They could then use that to argue in a future case that new devices are essentially the same as the old devices (thus still infringing the same patents) and use that to support a new injunction banning the newer devices.

Comment Re:Uhh, the games? (Score 1) 155

So they should go after the sites that host ROMs and such. Emulators are legal, regardless of how people may use them to do illegal things. Courts have stated this in many cases in the past. As long as the emulator authors don't go so far as telling people where to get ROMs and the like, I don't see how Atari would have a leg to stand on.
Crime

Political Robocallers Indicted In Maryland 85

sanzibar writes with a llnk to Politico with an object lesson for modern political campaigners: don't harass the electorate with unwanted robocalls. "Ehrlich campaign manager Paul Schurick and Baltimore political consultant Julius Henson were both charged with three counts of conspiracy to violate election laws, one count of attempting to influence a voter's decision and one count of failing to print an 'authorized by' line on campaign material. Schurick was also charged with a single count of obstruction of justice for failing to turn over materials sought by the grand jury."

Comment Phantasy Star Online (Score 1) 158

What I'd love to see would be an update of the original Phantasy Star Online... Updated graphics, including Episode 1, 2, and 4 (a new episode after those would be a nice bonus), and a solid online community (preferably with all the hacks fixed). Even if its a pipe-dream, I'd also like to see them make it an available option to connect to unofficial servers for when the servers that would be put up would inevitably be taken down.
Portables (Apple)

New MacBook Pros Launched 411

Art Vanderlay writes "Apple's new MacBook lineup has launched with a refresh to the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models. As expected, the MacBook and MacBook Air both feature Core 2 Duo processors, as does the 13. The 15 and 17 models come with a choice of i5 or i7. Memory is 4GB across the board, with an optional upgrade. Additionally, the new line may include three different types of screen options: Glossy, High Resolution Glossy, and High Resolution Glossy with Anti-Glare. A second person familiar with the matter adds that at least some models will support 512GB of Solid State Drive (Flash) storage."

Comment Re:Games don't use multiple cores? (Score 3, Informative) 354

+1. Rhaban, physics/graphics is one of the MOST parallelizable operations we have. The "shared dataset" is the previous solved set, and no communication is needed so long as the previous set is in shared memory of some sort. The new data should be deterministically determined by the previous set. Graphics processors use this in a non-core-based system where specialized hardware modifies the data set in a pre-determined way massively in parallel.

Comment Re:Games don't use multiple cores? (Score 2, Insightful) 354

I would guess a fairly big factor is because generally the game logic which runs of the processor doesn't degrade well. With graphics you can lower resolutions, change texture sizes and add additional lighting effects which are optional so the game just looks a bit worse but plays the same. Trying to do the same with game logic is much harder, maybe some adaptive AI could be made to play better on faster hardware plus some extra graphical effects probably need some extra processor time but these changes would be much less.

Then the developers want the game to be playable on as many machines as is feasible so they head for as low a target as possible which is a single threaded machine. Making it work on multiple cores then turns into a pretty difficult task for very little gain because of the above.

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