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Comment Re:It's all about erosion of citizen rights (Score 1) 340

Because seven weeks is plenty of time to change people's minds about who they want to vote for. Especially when you run the most inept campaign in political history, and your main opponent massively outperforms (admittedly very low) expectations. Having all that data won't help if it changes before it's used.

Comment Re:Isn't it obvious what's going on here? (Score 1) 340

The public are afraid. They demand action to stop the terrorists.

Are we really? Mostly, it seems like a whole lot of "Keep Calm and Carry On" (and twitter memes mocking the NYT for suggesting we were "reeling"). I see the politicians claiming that the people are demanding action, and using that as an excuse to push forward whatever draconian measures they want to. If the public are demanding anything in this case, it's probably the replacement of the 20,000 police officers Theresa May presided over the demise of – something that might actually help!

Comment Re: LOTRO (Score 1) 181

I'd agree that Turbine have done a pretty good job with converting LOTRO to a hybrid F2P model. You can continue to subscribe and be in the same position as before F2P launched (content and slots unlocked for as long as you subscribe, except for expansions), plus you get a monthly allotment of points to spend in the store. Alternatively you can go a la carte, and buy content and slots as 1-time unlocks (and you can earn points for the store in-game - enough to unlock everything if you're willing to spend enough time grinding). I've not found there to be any instances where paid consumables/services are at all necessary - yes, you can buy buffs and pots to make things a bit easier (but in a PvE setting I don't see a problem with this), and items that will give you quick travel or reduced a grind (but these grinds are ones that existed in the game pre-F2P).

Comment Re:Too many microtransactions. (Score 1) 181

TF2 is a particularly good example - what you get for free is the original paid base game plus several years' worth of updates. You can buy weapons and cosmetics (which can also be got in-game via random drops and crafting) and various other utility items that don't have any (non-cosmetic) effect on gameplay. More importantly, the weapons are all intended to be sidegrades offering alternate play-styles and situational advantages - you can't pay-to-win in any meaningful way.

Comment What ebooks are missing (Score 2) 331

Here are the missing things that are currently stopping me from defecting from the land of dead-tree books:

1) The reader that's as pleasant and easy to read as book, anywhere I might want to read (like in the bath, or our in the sun on a hot day), and that doesn't leave me twenty times as much out of pocket if it gets lost, stolen or damaged.

2) Cost of acquisition on a par with books. Currently, it's not uncommon for Amazon to be selling a paper book for less than they charge for the kindle version. Factor in the second-hand market, and you can pretty much always pick up a book for significantly less than an ebook.

3) The ability to sell/loan/give away ebooks. And be 100% sure that I'll always be able to read them. The value of books is significantly diminished if I can't lend them to friends and family (and borrow theirs), and if I no longer want them to sell them off or donate them to a charity shop. Or if in ten year's time the vendor went out of business and took their DRM system with them and I can no longer read my ebooks.

4) A way of converting all my paper books into (legal) ebooks. The biggest advantage of ebooks (hundreds of books in your pocket!) is completely if for any given book I wan to read there's a 95% chance that I'm going to have to go and get it off the bookshelf anyway (not that it wouldn't be nice not to be forever running out of bookshelf space)

That last one is, for me, the real killer. Ripping all my CDs into iTunes took a while, but now I have all my music wherever I go and my CDs are in boxes in the attic. I can't do that with books. Sure, I could try and track down pirated ebooks for every paper book I own, but that would take a very long time, and I'm betting there are plenty I wouldn't be able to find. Plus I'd still need to hang onto the originals to make the slightest claim on legality...

Iphone

The Surprising Statistics Behind Flash and Apple 630

Barence writes "PC Pro's Tom Arah has dug up some statistics that cast severe doubt over Steve Jobs' assertion that Flash is the technology of the past, and Apple's iOS is the platform of the future. He quibbles with Net Applications' assertion that iOS growth is 'massive,' considering that mobile accounts for only 2.6% of web views, and the iOS share stands at only 1.1%. By comparison, Silverlight penetration now stands at 51% while 97% of web surfers have Flash installed, according to Stat Owl. 'At least when Bill Gates held the web to ransom he had the decency to first establish a dominant position,' Arah claims. 'In Steve Jobs' case, with only 1.1% market share, the would-be emperor isn't even wearing any clothes.'"

Comment Re:StoneGate (Score 1) 414

I second this recommendation. Whilst it's pretty much overkill for a single firewall, once you start looking after a bunch of them the management centre really shines. You need to invest a bit of work in setting up your components (hosts, networks, non-standard services, groups, etc), but then the drag-and-drop firewall rules and VPN's are a breeze, and templating and shared/inherited rulesets can save a lot of duplicated effort. Centralised logging can be a real time-saver if you've got traffic that's passing through multiple firewalls and need to track exactly which rule on one of them is blocking it...

The Almighty Buck

The Nickel & Dime Generation 358

Phaethon360 sends in a piece that looks at how quickly game costs can add up these days, now that DLC, microtransactions and standalone expansions are commonplace, writing, "If you were trying to the think of the most expensive games to play, Rock Band or a monthly-fee MMORPG would come to mind. But Halo 3 is right up there, too." It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars.
Robotics

Smart Robot Capable of Hunting For Its Own "Food" 191

coondoggie writes "Ok, maybe this is getting a little too close to bringing Terminator-like robots to life. For starters, eco-friendly engine builder Cyclone Power this week inked a contract from Robotic Technologies, Inc. (RTI) to develop what it calls a beta biomass engine system that will be the heart of RTI's Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR). The purpose of EATR is to develop and demonstrate an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling — in other words it needs to 'eat.' According to researchers, the EATR system gets its energy by foraging, or what the firms describe as 'engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.'" We can only hope they don't team up with the Multi-Robot Pursuit System project to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human."

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