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Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194

An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."

Comment Re:Stupidest move, ever (Score 1) 246

So instead you prefer services tainted by the BBC's left-wing liberal bias?

If you're right-wing, then even centrists will appear to have a left-wing bias. That's why the phrase crops us so much in the Daily Mail, Express, Sun, Times, Telegraph, ...

To the raving nut-jobs in the UKIP, BNP and beyond, practically everyone looks left-wing and liberal.

Power

Tiny ARM-Based Sensor System Makes Battery Replacement Obsolete 96

An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan researchers have crammed an ARM Cortex microcontroller, a thin-film battery, and a solar cell into a package that is only 9 cubic millimeters in volume. The system is able to run perpetually by periodically recharging the on-board battery with a solar cell (neglecting physical wear-out of the system)."
Wii

Game Devs Migrating Toward iPhone, Away From Wii 143

A new report by Game Developer Research reveals that the number of developers working on games for the iPhone continues to rise, roughly doubling in number from last year. At the same time, the amount of work done on games for Nintendo's Wii dropped significantly: "Just over 70 percent of developers said they were developing at least one game for PC or Mac (including browser and social games), rising slightly from last year; 41 percent reported working on console games. Within that latter group, Xbox 360 was the most popular system with 69 percent of console developers targeting it, followed by 61 percent for PlayStation 3. While those console figures stayed within a few percent of last year's results, the change in Wii adoption was much more significant: reported developer support for the system dropped from 42 percent to 30 percent of console developers, supporting numerous publishers' claims of a recent softening of the Wii market."

Comment Well, duh! (Score 1) 189

Obviously, you wouldn't give these games to kids.

The article (yeah, I did RTFA) points out that those games are rated for age 17+, so I don't see what the issue is.

I wouldn't want my kids playing COD-MW2 or L4D2, but to be honest, they wouldn't want to play them anyway - they'd be much happier with the latest cutesy Wii party game, or something for the DS involving ponies.

Yet again, the mainstream media make the assumption that all games are for kids and are therefore completely shocked to see that some games involve blood, gore and subversive naughtiness.

Actually, I don't think they're shocked at all. They just think that their readers will be, and that's what sells papers and generates click revenue.

Games

Review Scores the "Least Important Factor" When Buying Games 169

A recent report from a games industry analyst suggests that among a number of factors leading to the purchase of a video game — such as price, graphics and word of mouth — the game's aggregated review score is the least important measure. Analyst Doug Creutz said, "We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game. We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by 'grade-grubbing' after the fact."

Comment Re:Maximizing copyright != maximizing producers (Score 1) 466

So let me see if I understand this: if someone, somewhere manages to compromise a particular model of HDTV, and that model's KSV is added to a revocation list used by broadcasters and stored on future HD media, anyone else innocently owning the same model TV would be affected?

So successfully compromising an HDCP device would be a very costly DOS attack?

I mean, what if some high-profile manufacturer's products (like Sony) were compromised in this way?
Does that mean the owners of an entire class of Sony products would find their devices unable to display certain content until they could apply some firmware update or buy a new device?

Comment Re:This is nuts. (Score 1) 403

Well my interpretation of the patent was that:they cite SGML and RTF as examples of embedding style and structure directly into the content stream, and their patent is for "an improved method" which emphatically does not put that metadata into the content but keeps the two separate.
So it's explicitly not like XML (which is an application of SGML).

And their method is not simply about a separate style sheet which defines mark-up in the content - it seems to be a description of which parts of the text have which formatting, so that the content could be plain text without any embedded mark-up.

So they haven't patented CSS either.

I fail to see what this patent has to do with Word or XML, and the complaint doesn't exactly point out the similarities.

Comment Re:It's the ultimate halo car (Score 1) 790

It wouldn't surprise me if Bugatti make a big move into a (obviously lower) luxury market very soon, cashing in on the recognition they've earned.

They wouldn't be the first.

The Bugatti brand has historically been known for exclusive and mostly very high performance automobiles in relatively the same market as other boutique Italian manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini or the British Aston Martin. The halo effect is well known in mass market brands, but Bugatti and other boutiques like it are NOT mass market brands and cannot be made into mass market brands without losing their boutique pedigree and exclusivity.

Aston Martin's halo might be about to slip, although the Cygnet will only be available to existing A-M owners.

Comment Re:Yeah but.... (Score 1) 790

It comes with Windows Mobile on the navigation system.

If I paid $2.1 million for a car, at the very least I'd want to be able to program the nav system from my high-end smart phone

For $2.1 million, I'd expect to have Mark Russinovich programming the satnav for me.

And Jessica Alba sat in the passenger seat announcing driving directions.

Wait. Does Jessica know her left from her right?

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