One issue with SmartScreen is how it treats new releases as false positives. An executable file or installer package that SmartScreen hasn't already seen several dozen times, such as a new release of a Windows application developed by a hobbyist, will get marked as "This file is not commonly downloaded and could harm your computer", and IE makes the user click through two different shapes of alert boxes in order to get any option other than "Delete".

Is there a reason why the entire stack of line-of-business code created for this startup has to consist entirely of "non-open-source projects"?

What's the closest thing to "web standards" for a 3D view in a web application? Both Chrome and Firefox support WebGL on capable video cards, but Microsoft has refused, complaining about "security problems".

Sony's word mark is Clarendon. Coby's is Bookman. There's a difference. The serif on the 'C' in Bookman is angled, while the same serif in Clarendon is vertical. Type COBY != SONY into Bookman and Clarendon to see the difference.

How does the PS3 know in what order the buttons appear so that games know which button number to map to X, which to Square, etc.? For example, a Logitech controller has the buttons in a different order compared to a SteelSeries controller.

Good point. If making a transaction away from Wi-Fi requires a cell phone with a data plan, then good luck paying your cell phone bill in BTC.

Either a lot of big-name games are going to have to come up with controller support at once, or each developer will have to somehow convince each user to buy a $59 controller to play a single $3 game. Besides, people who own an iPhone 4 or a fourth-generation iPod touch are still left out because iOS 7 requires an iPhone 4S or newer or a fifth-generation iPod touch. This means anyone who bought an iPod touch before October of last year will have to buy not only a controller but also another iPod touch. Who will buy a $299 iPod touch to play a $3 game?

Can be increased if you provide photo ID. For comparison, you have to provide photo ID to get a bank account or even to verify a Facebook account without having your own cell phone number that isn't shared with another Facebook user.

I thought transaction fees were the entire reason to mine as the minted coins per block decrease asymptotically.

Do transactions without a "tip" already take longer than an hour to get included in a block?

What's the accepted neutral term that means "iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad"?

Player 1's controller is $0 with the purchase of a console. Additional controllers are needed only for same-screen multiplayer, and Slashdot regulars such as CronoCloud have long maintained that same-screen is most useful to children, who have already become a minority in the market, and is dying out in favor of online. Besides, I've found it a lot easier to find used controllers for consoles than for phones. I bought the Xbox 360 wired controller that I use for PC gaming at this pawn shop.

I was under the impression that casual gamers expected handheld games to be in point-and-click genres, like Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Bejeweled, and the like. On consoles, conventional wisdom is that games requiring a specialized accessory (like Guitar Hero, DDR, and Wii Fit) have tended to sell well only when bundled with that accessory.

Let me rephrase it a different way: If you were to find an Android game on Google Play that could not be played to completion with just the on-screen gamepad, how many people do you think would ignore the "Controller strongly recommended" in the description, buy it, and give a one-star rating that it's too hard?

I wasn't singling out iPhone vs. Android as much as iPhone vs. 3DS/Vita. The Ouya console includes one controller. And even if you limit it to phones and tablets, if you happen to own an Xbox 360 controller or any HID controllers for the PC, those work with an Android 4 device through a $2 USB OTG cable.

Thank you. Between this, NVIDIA's Shield, and the various clip-on controllers that already worked on Android, it'll eventually boil down to who wants to buy a $60 controller to play a $3 game.

So how exactly do these successful iOS games emulate buttons without the player ending up pressing the wrong button or whiffing (pressing outside any button) all the time?

"Nobody" is a strong word. Consider these three scenarios:

One could develop an Android-exclusive application and use the revenue to buy a Mac, an iTrinket, and a developer certificate on which to port the application to iOS.

One could develop an Android-exclusive application in one of the categories that Apple is known to ban.

One could develop an Android-exclusive application that requires a gamepad. The forthcoming Ouya game console runs Android, and for game genres that aren't point-and-click, an on-screen gamepad isn't really a substitute for physical buttons. Let me know when Apple even ships a standard game controller for its current iBaubles.