If the game is offline, it could just as easily unload portions of the map that are outside of line-of-sight, or a given radius from the character. Events taking place in the unloaded areas that impact the visible ones may be abstracted away to use less memory, with terrain and mob states saved and loaded as the player approaches them again. That should take care of repetition as well as keeping the memory use constant.

Wrong reference there. Eh, does nobody watch Doctor Who?

Little boxes?
"The little boxes will make you angry!"

It certainly would, for turning the equivalent of an FMJ round into a shotgun shell. My vote is for a big-ass chemical thruster, those still have the greatest specific impulse we can muster on short notice.

Aside from Google Reader not being a definitive source, since it's only an integrator for RSS feeds specified by the user, and let's not go anywhere near Facebook as a news source, it's quite possible. I'm not following any of these, and I'm pretty sure there's a sizable percentage of the tech community who's the same way. The idea of his setup being an independent achievement is quite conceivable, for me at least.

According to Elixir, the AK8973 magnetometer in my Nexus S, from Asahi Kasei Microdevices has a resolution of 0,0625uT with a temporal resolution of 16667us. With an extensive enough database, that should be enough to distinguish between types of devices at the very least. Differentiating between individual devices or makes/models, now that's a whole other can of worms. It may or may not be possible, but on this one, I'm leaning to go with you and say that such in-depth profiling is indeed impossible.

I'm replying to you in particular because it pisses me off when people accuse me of giving up principles or points I have taken.

I'm not saying "no big deal. sucks anyway.", I only revised my argument to accommodate my belief that patented inventions should present a leap in thought not reproducible by an outsider, which this patent clearly fails to do, as a complete stranger arrived at the same conclusion independently.

I may prefer Android over Apple, but I'm most certainly not a 'fanboi'.

I think people are interpreting my words the wrong way purposely. The Apple patent is not innovative enough as in not making a leap, logical or intuitive, that others cannot make. This is proven by a hacker, without access to a multi-million dollar research budget, who arrived at the same conclusion. Note that this does not belittle his efforts in any way, rather, it's a praise to him and it's belittling Apple's research department for being matched by a tinkerer.

I believe that the only inventions that should be patentable are those that are were born of such a leap of thought that they demonstrably cannot be reproduced without access to the original research material and/or reverse engineering the device itself. It is on this belief that I base my argument of "not innovative", since the hackaday article clearly shows that a simple hacker can independently arrive at the same solution Apple arrived at, without accessing the Apple research documentation or reverse-engineering a prototype (if prototypes even exist of this device).

Yes, sorry, I didn't notice the 2009 Q4 filing date there. Allow me to revise the argument: "not innovative" (I hesitate to write "obvious", since, it's not really that obvious) if a garage tinkerer can arrive at the same conclusion.

Actually, this makes them infinitely compatible, since the iPhones rely on the magnetic signature of other devices to recognize them, possibly even without interaction from those devices. Passive recognition, in essence.

I can give the Samsung (or any other party's) lawyers some ammo: prior art. A low-cost data interface using the magnetometer to extract data from a variable magnetic field. The granted patent covers this process almost verbatim, more than one and a half years after its first (published) development.

Regulating it in advance would provide a stable legal background for off-world resource exploitation. Currently, besides technological problems, the biggest hurdle the space mining industry is facing is the unclear/poorly defined legal standing of outer space, and even more importantly, the resources extracted, namely whether they inherit the "common domain of mankind" status of outer space, which would make it impossible to turn a profit, since all nations could potentially demand an equal share.

And one has a vested interest in remaining under the radar of Chinese law enforcement. Or any other country's law enforcement, for that matter, especially a foreign country's.

Given the short range and low bandwidth (424 kilobits/s) of NFC technology, this is more of an esoteric attack than a practical one. I think I'd notice someone shadowing me with a hand at my pocket to connect to my Nexus S via its NFC chip and pull data from it...
Still, it's a show of force (and vulnerabilities).

At the very least, that part is true. The basic aim of any politician is, and should be, to get into power, amass as much power as they can, and keep it. Which is all well in an ideal (emphasis) democracy, since power comes from the people, and the better off the general populace is, the better off politicians are, and the more likely they are to be kept in power.