Comment Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? (Score 1) 379
I'd hate if someone from the government ever got ahold of my searches while watching Breaking Bad...
Comment reading comprehension? (Score 5, Insightful) 295
Isn't that a better test of people's poor reading comprehension and listening skills?
Comment I hope the WiiU is Nintendo's Dreamcast... (Score -1, Flamebait) 282
I don't wish ill on the company, but I hope that the WiiU is the end of Nintendo hardware, and that they'll start publishing games for other companies' hardware. Not unlike Sega. The Wii may have been an innovation with motion-controlled gaming, but it's a dubious innovation and was topped by Microsoft's Kinect (which is also dubious; I basically use mine to bark commands at my squadmates in single-player Mass Effect 3). The 3DS hasn't really been a success. Maybe it's time for them to realize that they could make serious money by putting their games on IOS, on XBLA, on PSN.
Comment I wish Nintendo would go the way of Sega (Score 1) 146
I would gladly pay money to Nintendo if they released their past titles on XBLA, IOS, Android, etc. I'd love to carry around Super Mario Bros. on my iPad. (Yes, I know I could probably jailbreak and emulate. I'd rather be legit.)
Comment Recorded preference in tablecloth colors (Score 1) 408
Douglas Adams nailed it...again.
Comment Re:Push for Secure SMTP (Score 2) 214
Many of those businesses are already required to use TLS, which while not SMTPS, it performs essentially the same role.
Comment Re:Also in retail stores (Score 1) 262
I ordered the 8GB model, expecting to have to wait the 1 to 2 weeks quoted for it to ship. My order shipped the next day. It's sitting in a closet, still in the shipping box, because it's for my son's 10th birthday, which is a month away.
Comment Re:Why always Ms. Pac Man, but hardly ever Pac Man (Score 1) 177
I remember hearing that a lot of the original Pac Man cabinets were revamped for Ms. Pac Man when it was released - the boards replaced and the cabinet reskinned - which is why it's very difficult to find a vintage Pac Man cabinet. But like BigSes said, Ms is simply more fun, which would explain why it's the only one you see now. (Except for Pac Man Championship Edition, which is insanely cool. Hope the new edition adds an infinite play mode.)
Comment Re:Might explain my crashes (Score 1) 422
NVIDIA GeForce 9400 (oh, and 10.6.4 - forgot about that last point upgrade). I have the res set to 1920x1080 and most of the options set to low or medium.
Comment Might explain my crashes (Score 5, Informative) 422
I'm playing Starcraft II on the last-gen iMac (purchased about four months ago) on OS X 10.6.3. The game is stable during gameplay, but it's crashed on me several times in cutscenes, onboard the Hyperion, or even in the main menu (ironically, while I was bringing up the menu to quit the game).
Why Broadband In North America Is Not That Slow 376
An anonymous reader writes "The Globe & Mail has an article written in response to a recent study done by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard about how far behind the rest of the world the US and Canada are with regard to broadband internet. The refutation basically tears apart Harvard's analysis and shows why the US and Canada are actually far ahead of most European countries. 'Canada has a true broadband penetration rate of close to 70 per cent of households. And North Americans use the Internet somewhat more intensively than do Europeans, according to Cisco Systems data on Internet traffic. Further, business Internet traffic in North America appears to be at levels substantially higher than elsewhere in the world. Sadly, there is little systematic effort by international agencies to measure the intensity of Internet usage. Instead, we see comparisons of advertised speeds and "price per advertised megabit," which are especially misleading. Advertised broadband speeds vary from actual speeds. In North America, this is largely a result of "network overhead," and is quite modest. In Europe, however, the variation is often dramatic.'"
Comment Re:the problem with ads these days (Score 1) 1051
oh btw am i mistaken that ad block plus actually DOES NOT DOWNLOAD THE ADS IT BLOCKS
I wish ad blockers *would* download the ads, but not display them. It would never result in a click, but it would result in a view, so depending on the ad deal between publisher and advertiser, the site may still get credit.
Comment Re:the school district model (Score 1) 620
I figured once that it cost me $0.40 per day to make coffee at home, given the weight of beans I grind per pot and the filtered water I use. That's $146 per year, or $104 if I only made it five days a week. So, $60 to $120 per year isn't far off.
DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201
MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle."
Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
Comment Re:I can't speak to raw escolar, but... (Score 1) 554
I had a similar, though better informed, experience with escolar. My wife and I were planning on having a nice anniversary dinner at an upscale restaurant in Austin, TX. Escolar was on their online menu, and I read up on it. The Wikipedia article is very precise in its description of its symptoms, and that it's banned in other countries. I thought, bah, it can't really do that to you...can it? It was one of two options on their prixe fixe menu, and I can cook a good steak myself, so it's what I ordered. After dinner, we walked a couple blocks over to a bar off 6th Street. As the lady at the door was going to take our cover charge, I suddenly felt like my bowels were going to violently void themselves. We ducked out of line and hurried back to the hotel. I made it just in time, and had one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had on a toilet. The symptom descriptions were very accurate.
