Camera, no. I haven't heard specifically. However, as to the mic: "The new Kinect is listening for a specific cue, like 'Xbox on.'". When it's "off", it's still listening. Combined with their camera-counting-people DRM patent and the fact that - as far as I know - you can't run the XBox One without the Kinect, I'm not eager to take the gamble.

Yes, "Here's a gaming console with a camera and mic you can't unplug that's listening when it's off." is not the same statement as "Here's a gaming console with a camera that's always on." But it's not any better.

Cloud: Buzzword, meh.
+
Phone-home requirement: Disturbing.
+
Camera and mic that can't be disabled at all: Frightening.
=
I can't tell if this is 1984's telescreen or Max Headroom's rebus tape feed.

Either way I'm not letting one in my house.

You know, if the major news outlets that could afford to shell out for the video aren't touching it with a ten foot pole, maybe you should take that as a sign that it's not worth the money.

Kinda hard to hit it with a hammer before they send it to me.

It's funny, last I checked - admittedly years ago - there was less requirement for banks to reimburse you for debit card fraud than there was for credit card companies to do it for credit card fraud.

My credit card company sends me unactivated cards that are useless until I prove that I'm the rightful owner of the card.

My bank sent me - without warning - a card that anyone who robbed my mailbox could be using in minutes and kept using until I checked my balance.

tl;dr Fuck you RBC.

My bank rolled out contactless cards... by mailing one to me. No notification to me, preactivated, no PIN needed for purchases under $200.

I went there and bitched them out about it and they really could not understand why I was mad.

If a mugger shoots a guy in the leg and then takes his wallet, we don't skip arrest and trial because the mugger could have just as easily shot him in the head and we should be grateful that we have muggers who respect the sanctity of human life.

Except they won't be, not in any quantity or quality. TotalBiscuit's arguments weren't all well-formed, but he did hit on a few good points.

Somewhat peripherally but still relevant, ContentID is broken and misses as often as it hits. (Hell, yesterday I ran into a video of a guy playing Beethoven's Fifth that had been ContentID-blocked by EMI.)

But more to the point, the online reviewers and Let's Players who do their jobs the best are the ones who are getting paid for it. In general it's the better amateurs who get fanbases big enough that the ads can aid or outright support them, giving them a way to improve their videos with things like editing software (and the time to use it) and the cash incentive to work harder at it. The utterly shit ones who don't care about quality and use their cell phone to record the TV aren't popular and won't make money.

So what happens now? The professionals will abandon Nintendo's stuff and do Let's Plays and reviews of other stuff that they can make the money they need to keep doing it, so a higher percentage of Nintendo-related videos will be low-quality and low-profile. It's the same wrong-headedness that assumes blocking used games on a console means the retailers will fill the shelf space from those nonexistent used games with new games rather than the competition's used games.

In a sense this is like Nintendo's E3 decision; they're trying to save/make money and in doing so are damaging the hype machine that brings in some of their sales.

Disabling System Restore also did wonders for stability. That thing was broken as hell. And yet, once in absolute desperation, I used it on a customer's PC after he messed it up playing around with system files... and it worked. I was shocked.

> They believe that animal testing is morally wrong, and that it's sufficiently wrong as to justify direct action, namely trespassing, vandalism and theft.

So, if I believe abortion, or SOPA, or miscegenation, or not letting gays marry, or polytheism, or animal rights activism is "morally wrong", that justifies trespassing, vandalism and theft.

> Their target is clearly the institution of animal research, not the particular animals.

Peaceful protest of their target went right out the window, had to go straight to the use of violence/threats to intimidate or coerce their target.

> If you want to combat a view or group of people with a view, try to understand them first, rather than trying to score cheap rhetorical points like your "hate people" comment.

I believe I understand them well enough to make the conclusion that they're driven by hate. I admit, maybe it's not hatred of people; maybe they hate scientists, or education, or labs, or desks, or something. But when two groups disagree fundamentally on a subject, the one that engages in destruction or violence against the other *first* is generally not occupying the moral high ground.

> These people are short-sighted and wish to live in a world of absolutes, they can't handle the fact that life is not truly black and white in morality or anything else.

Apparently we know some of the same people! (Far more depressing thought that's more likely to be the truth: There's so many of them that we've both had run-ins with the same archetype.)

Hah.... Problem is, for the nuts that do this it doesn't matter if the animals live or die. Either they're "saved from a worse fate" in the lab, or it's "the scientists who made them like this" so their existence is already unnatural or they're even "martyrs to the cause", but it's a flimsy justification for wanting to bust up someone's workplace without running into the level of security to be found in the average factory or office complex.

Ultimately, it's not that they like animals. It's that they hate people.

Most people don't see their own behavior as creepy and suspicious.

> Average power consumption might be a little above the "idle" power draw, this would be an interesting experiment for someone with a kill-a-watt and an old P4 to measure that.

The things I do for people.:) I've got a gizmo similar to a kill-a-watt and a P4 (1 HDD, 1 gig of DDR RAM, GeForce 4 MX 440 vidcard - so it was something of a gaming rig in its day). Booting it peaked at 150W (and I can make it hit 130-140W JUST by running a Malwarebytes scan) but idling at the XP desktop it's sitting steady at 95W.

Copying a benchmark program off LAN and installing it: 115W
Cussing because I grabbed a benchmarker that needs C++ redistributables I don't have handy: 0W
Burn in test V6: CPU, RAM, HDD, 2D and 3D Video @75%: 150W steady with spikes of 165W
Shutdown: About 140W from time desktop vanished to power-off.

OS, at least within Microsoft, doesn't make much difference: My P4 is dual boot, and Windows 98 looked to be within 5W of XP's numbers all the way through. Though I skipped the benchmarking as I'm not filled with quite that much self-loathing.

All living things pollute.

Therefore all living things are dangerous.

Dangerous things need to be stopped.

Therefore life itself needs to be stopped.

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/2/22955/854494-judge_dead_4_large.png

You do realize that if your argument is "the current guy is averaging a bit better than the previous guy" or "the current guy has the potential to only be half as bad as the previous guy" (I can't tell which one you're aiming for) you don't actually have an argument, right?

Does it matter? The IIPA is a nebulous group like the RIAA or MPAA. They hide behind the name. They could announce plans to put copyright violators in death camps and people would be horrified (what few found out about it) while STILL not realizing the media they purchase and TV they watch is funding it.