I'm with you on this. Ubisoft has a history of lying about their DRM and other things, to the point that I don't even believe anything they say anymore, and have lost a great deal of respect for them as a company.

Ubisoft isn't beyond releasing the game with this "DRM on startup only" system, then forcing users to patch the game later in order to keep playing it to a full "must be online always forever until the earth rots" DRM a month hence.

I downloaded that Geometry Wars clone as well. It's a game called PewPew. The controls are a little iffy but after playing a while you do tend to get somewhat used to them. Overall it's a good game, and I don't fault the developer for the control issues.

That said, smart phones are powerful enough to handle complex games. We know this. Most have seen the Kal-El "Glowball" demo that came out recently (if you have not, youtube it). It shows off what the nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core can do, and it only goes up from here. But we need controllers. Desperately.

First, though, we need APIs for it. For the iPhone and Android each, we need an API very similar to DirectX's DirectInput. Something that defines a structured set of rules and specifications for controllers and how various controller functions are handled (thumbsticks, D-pads, buttons, etc.). Once that's in place, then you start having companies develop compatible controllers for it, and have a certification system in place. Then, if you're a game developer, if your game needs to use a more traditional control set, encourage developers to support the platform for the system. In other words, make a gaming API that is very tightly integrated into the OS itself (like DirectX is with Windows), and include a rich, highly-functional input API to handle gaming.

Do this, and gaming on mobile devices will soar, and it won't just be touch-based games either. You'll have real, honest-to-goodness traditional gaming the way it ought to be done.

Second on changing cartridges. A mobile platform should allow you to at least install games to some form of storage memory on the system, whether that be an internal hard drive, SD card, etc. Going to a download service would be a convenience for a mobile platform. Although the PS Vita will also use cartridge-based storage.

That being said, another option would be to include multiple cartridge slots directly in the system. Instead of carrying around a bulky case to house your system and 3-5 games, why not instead have a bay of cartridge slots that would allow you to insert up to three games at once in the system. That would give you a good enough variety to justify needing cartridges while not limiting you down to pretty much just one (unless you want loose carts flopping about in your pocket or having to carry around a bulky storage case).

Ah. I think I understand here. So basically, either an outside OR an inside salesperson makes a sale. But not both. Therefore, if it's the outside guy, that person gets 20% and the inside people get zilch. But if it's an inside guy that makes the sale, the engineering salesperson gets 10-15% while the rest of the engineers as a whole get the remaining 5% to share, and the outside people get to work a little harder next time.

In either case, if this is what you're saying AC (and I believe it is), nobody is making over 20% for any individual sale. So what you're basically doing is setting up a 20% commission and telling both groups that it's up for grabs for whoever is able to make the sale happen.

Seems a little high still at 20%. I'd probably bump that on down to about 10-12% tops with perhaps an additional end-of-year 10% bonus for your top sales rep (either inside or outside, as that gives an incentive to make more sales). Sounds ok unless you're aiming to share the commissions with everyone. In which case, it would take some retooling of the numbers. But every situation is different, of course.

Yes, it's actually a very decent "Halo" clone. Originally for iPhone and later ported to Android. I grabbed it for my Samsung Galaxy S and I've played the heck out of it. It has a good single player campaign mode, and decent online multiplayer. NOVA2 is better, of course, but the original game is nice.

I wouldn't have a problem with them giving me free stuff. But I would say that they should either give me a way to uninstall it, or if they won't do me that service, at least give me the full version of the game to enjoy. One or the other. Unfortunately, Gameloft is notorious for preinstalling a demo of their game on phones and asking you for $5 to unlock the rest of it. My Galaxy S has a demo for "Asphalt 5" preinstalled, which I haven't bought.

I'm afraid I concur. I am quite disappointed in Texas. I don't dislike them by any means, and would still visit their wonderful state. But their legislature folded like a cheap suit on this issue, and I just find that disheartening because if there were any state in the union I would've picked to be a battleground for this, it would've likely been Texas (Florida and Georgia being #2 and #3, due to the large number of airports in Florida, and Georgia due to Atlanta).

That being said, I'm one that refuses to fly anywhere until this nonsense has stopped. I've told my girlfriend that, should we get married, when we get ready to go on a honeymoon or any trip for that matter? If we can't drive there or go by boat, we aren't going. That I refuse to fly until the gate-rapers are gone. I value my liberty and freedom much more than that, and there's more than one way to travel around than on a stupid airplane!

Because for whatever reason, some people seem to think that free software is inferior to paid software, and that a product is only good if you have to shell out money for it. And the more money you shell out, the better it is, because you have to pay for it! At least, that's their thinking. Thus you have products like Norton, McAfee, and websites like DoubleMySpeed and FixMyPcFree (gag) that are actually making money on the same principle, and they do nothing more than a typical end user can do with free software and just a little bit of ingenuity and knowhow, and a cursory glance at Google for directions.

This, plus I gather the MPAA has a part in twisting Google's arm to put certain stipulations in place to cover them. It just doesn't sound like the kind of thing Google would worry about themselves unless there were someone else involved in the deal. All speculation, of course. But food for thought.

This was what I said over on Gizmodo when the story broke there.

In all honesty, if you have a rooted phone, you already know how to stream your own movies from your PC to your phone, or have some other method of getting movies ripped from optical media and into a format that works quite well on your phone (which is either just as good or better than the convenience of downloading through the Android Movie Market in the first place).

I think you're absolutely right about that. When I first started my current job in October of 2009, we were running Windows XP still, but two monitors. It was handy, but I didn't really see the full potential of what having two monitors could do for me as a coder since I still had to fiddle around with maximize and minimize and it was all new concept to me because I'd never used two monitors at once, even though I knew the capabilities were there and had been there for years.

Then we all upgraded to Windows 7 (well most of us anyway. Some are still running XP, but most have jumped to 7), and boy does Windows 7 make it a lot easier to do what you want with your windows! Its multi-monitor support is much more intuitive, so I'm really digging that. The only thing I find odd is that Microsoft still has yet to allow you to directly assign a different background on each window (or if that feature is in there, I haven't found it yet). Also, two seperate taskbars on each window with the task buttons on the bottom representing the apps appearing on that particular window.

Fix these two things, and I would say Windows' multi-monitor support would be perfect. But as it is, it's pretty nice, and quite handy if you're a coder looking at help pages and code at the same time, or two different source code files to compare things or copy bits of code from one file to another or something to that effect.

I'm satisfied with the consumer-end bargains that they're offering for PSN users like myself. The one year of identity theft protection is a big help, plus two game, even downloadable ones, are a nice touch as well. Retail vouchers would've been better, of course.

But the only other thing I can ask is that, going forward, Sony should now be required to answer to a higher-up authority in regards to network security. What I mean is that, since Sony dropped the ball on such a massive scale, it could be argued that Sony should have to retain the services of a third-party security firm (not the government, mind you) to provide auditing and oversight at all times over the PSN, ensuring that this kind of breach can never happen again. Or at least, if such a breach occurs, consumer data is protected against the intrusion. This includes making sure that Sony keeps everything up to date, encrypted appropriately, and completely separate credit card information, personal data, and game-related profiles on their web servers into different locations so that hacking a user's gamer profile doesn't grant access to his/her personal data or credit card info.

It would certainly be the last password I'd ever use.

I use KeePass primarily because it's the only one I've found for Android that works cross-platform anywhere the way I'd like to use it. KeePass plus a secured DropBox account to keep your password database synced across machines (or databases if you want added security with a secondary password for more private-like info) are an excellent combination. Throw in a key file that you keep locally on your person on either your phone or a small-capacity USB drive kept on a keychain for added security.

I did look at Password Safe, but at the time there was no Android version and I needed something I could keep on my phone and access my passwords there too. Keepass fits the bill quite nicely.

Well, I posted in a thread up above that they're an alternative. And I do own both consoles and use both online to varying degrees depending on what game(s) I'm playing. Whether they're a good alternative or even a better alternative is relative to how one is behaving over the other.

At the moment I'd say they're a good alternative for me. Xbox Live is up. PSN is down. And the Wii? Well, it'd be nice to play a game online on it too but I've never found anyone online on the games I own.

But it's a shame, really. I wanted to play some Portal 2 co-op this weekend after finishing up that single-player campaign, and I got the PS3 version and can't download the PC version at home due to my wireless broadband download cap (thanks, Verizon).

Actually, there are other places to go. PC or Xbox Live. No place for Sony exclusives though. But alternatives, still.