My thermostat also did that and it's a rolled up piece of metal that contracts and expands to complete a circuit. No batteries required! I haven't seen a thermostat that "failed to start the furnace" just because it was cold..

With offline mode, EA can now shut down the servers that were once required while still selling the game. Since SimCity isn't subscription based, the servers are just a drain of money for them at this point since the hype died down and not many are going to pirate it.

Come a few months they'll be announcing that the online portion will be shuttered, but look forward to the next great EA release!

Stick it in a plastic bag and it should have all the same benefits plus being waterproof. I'm sure the manufacturers could come up with a way that lets air through if they wanted that.

That just shows a lack of education or old technology in use. The system is designed so they can use a SNAP card to pay for the SNAP eligible items, and use cash for the rest - only 1 transaction is necessary.

I had the same problem - turns out clocks are handy. Of course there's still the one on the thermometer, the thermostat, the stove, the microwave, and everything electronic in my pocket - but what am I suppose to do? Turn my head around? Not when I have an electronic picture frame I can stick in my living room with a clock!

Well considering media is still covering Republicans bringing up Bengazi even though they don't even know what they're trying to get from it, I guess it'll be a couple years

Combining all my contacts' email addresses is a stretch to call "evil". For the vast majority of people it would be a handy feature

It's a bit confusing because the summary links the version 1 - the version 3 (that you can control) has a tiny rudder at the back: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/393053146/powerup-30-smartphone-controlled-paper-airplane

Giving someone a standalone software package is different than upgrading a system package. Offline systems can be upgraded with a USB stick, but it's harder to do a system update that way.

There are lots of people that have installed python (or had it installed), but not as many that are willing to upgrade their python installation to the latest version. The jump to python 3.0 is a little tricky because some code is not compatible (which is why we still have 2.x) so there's lots of software that would break if people upgrade.

When developing, it's important to aim for the lowest support level. If all my customers are running offline RHEL 4, I'm stuck with python 2.3.

I have one of those $15 remote control helicoptors that uses a smart phone as the control. It's difficult to work because you have to look at the screen to make sure you still have your thumb over the throttle/"joystick" while at the same time looking at the aircraft. It has a motion control mode too, but that only helps with steering and very precise steering is needed.

If it's cheap enough, it might make a cool remote control unit and it'd be great if it has an affordable camera.

Because we want the information? If they're not good at their jobs, we should find better people, not just assume that guns don't kill people.

You mean the report where they said they didn't have enough information? Pretty obvious why that wasn't "trumpeted" by anyone.

So the solution is do defund them and no do any more research or improve the research? It's pretty obviously an attempt to hide any anti-gun information that comes up. Everyone knows guns are dangerous, yet all the studies show guns make things safer? Give me a break!

The choice of an SD card seems like a strange form factor. As far as I've seen, they're only useful as storage devices. I guess you could put some cloud interface or image processing in it, but it doesn't look like a good choice for a raspberrypi replacement as it'd be difficult to attach anything to it.