Posts by zemerick

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Chrome not so "Chatty" after all

My report disagrees with others. I'm using Chrome, with several extensions ( 1 being uBlock, not exactly a rare fringe case they didn't test ), and it reported no extensions.

I have other questions about this being so amazing for tracking: For example, they try to claim I have a 0 on the scale of how unidentifiable I am, yet they were not able to identify me by my extensions. ( For the obvious reason of them detecting none. ) So, it seems when you don't have any...instead of counting that as 0 extensions found, and being unidentifiable, they just throw it altogether.

Also, according to a post a bit above, about 1 in 3 people so far were NOT identifiable. With such an insignificant sample size, it seems that this would quickly get to the point where virtually no one was identifiable. I mean, they supposedly identified me because I was logged into 5 of the most popular websites in the entire world, and a 6th that is still quite common. ( Yahoo, Gmail, Reddit, Youtube, Twitter and Github. )

I have a distinct feeling that even just with a few more Reg people checking, that I will no longer be identifiable by my sites either.

NTM: This ignores the part where say you log out of a website, or log into a new one. Suddenly you are now a whole different person according to this.

Finally, I think the main thing that narrowed me down for properties was probably my timezone. Mountain time is by far the least populated us timezone. How many people do you think have visited this french domain site from Mountain timezone? ( Especially when it's only had about 4700 people test it so far. )

The principle of it is all fairly sound though. It's just mainly the execution at this point. It's sort of the tech equivalent of identifying a person based on their likes and dislikes. Get enough to check, and eventually you can tell pretty much every one apart.

Spinning rust fans reckon we'll have 18TB disk drives in two years

Re: All wishful thinking!

It depends on the size. At 500GB it's under 3:1 ( unless you want to test your luck with a bargain bin refurb, which is still only about 4:1. )

SSDs have been plummeting in price, doubling size every year, all while HDDs have been nearly stagnant.

I'm personally done with HDD. SSD are big enough and cheap enough to make the switch now.

SSDs are moving so fast, I have to look it up every single time I talk about it. I have a friend looking to get a 1tb ssd in a few months, and was wondering what it would cost. I started saying probably a bit over $500, then caught myself. A few months ago I bought an 850 EVO 500GB for $147. Even the 850 Pro is under $500 for 1TB, while a Mushkin is only $210.

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

It's funny to see just how different peoples opinions are. I'm about to further showcase that with one of my all time dislikes.

I should first point out that I watch movies for entertainment. Not art. Also, continue to read on to my second, which is my most hated movie.

2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, if you handed me BE and 2001, and pointed a gun at my head to choose...I would choose BE. I find it really funny that people will complain how little plot the Transformers movies have, and then claim to love 2001, which had much less. ( To be fair, what I've read about the books suggests it's a lot better there. ) I mean, it took what, 45 minutes to get out of the apes scene and start the movie? The newest Transformers only took like 10 minutes to get past its own backstory. ( Don't get me wrong, there was plenty wrong with T4 as well. Everything burns/explodes, female is set up to be a strong lead character then spends the second half crying for help and being entirely useless, etc. )

Now that that little gripe is out of the way, it's time for the real winner ( loser? ):

THX-1138.

Allow me to sum this movie up: They walk over to a ladder and climb out.

There's no drama, intrigue, interest, plot, nothing. It has not a single saving grace. It's the epitome of what happens when George Lucas is allowed to make things his own way.

This was the most bored I have ever been in a movie. I kept watching it expecting something to happen. I kid you not, as they climbed out of the ladder, I was thinking "Finally something is going to happen!"...and then came the credits. I watched this with my parents, who have quite different tastes, and they too thoroughly hated it.

I recommend saving thx-1138 for the last of this terrible marathon, to really drive home the bad. If you go into it wanting the last few hours back, and wanting something to happen/to do...this will surely bring out the suicidal thoughts.

BENDY iPhone 6, you say? Pah, warp claims are bent out of shape: Consumer Reports

Re: Blogger Fraud, even?

Really?

So, because someone doesn't film everything in sequential order, that makes it fraud? Last I checked, that was just proper film making.

It's pretty clear what happened is he filmed the bend test first, then the conclusion ( which shows 1:59 ), then later films the intro. The time gap suggests he probably put the video together, and felt the intro he originally had wasn't cutting it. So, he refilmed it.

I especially find it funny, considering this guy is (was?) largely on Apples side. He massively down plays the fact that he bent the phone by hand ( the bending part is shown without cutting, so the rest doesn't matter. ), and even admits that it's his own phone. ( Though, he might have switched to a Moto X now... as shown in his followup video for the conspiracy theorists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3Ds6uf0Yg&feature=youtu.be which shows him bending the iphone 6 plus quite fast and easily actually. ) He does seem to dislike Apples comments on the matter though, and thinks they are downplaying the issue. ( Which of course, is exactly what Apple should do. You never want to scream the sky is falling regarding your own product. )

It would be much more interesting to see the bend numbers at various times: 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, and 6 months. Of course, we have some time to go still for most of those, and at 6 months it will be closing in on being a moot point. ( Most Apple users update yearly instead of once every 2 or 3 years. )

Bendgate backlash: Apple claims warped iPhone 6 Plus damage is 'extremely rare'

That consumer reports test wasn't very scientific at all. It was rather disappointing in fact.

They did not test any variables besides force, and made no effort to replicate the real world.

For example, with a 3 point test, pushing on the middle gives it the least amount of leverage. In the real world, forces are often not placed precisely in the middle, causing a force multiplication from the leverage.

This also nicely avoided the known weak spot. You can even see it in their video/screenshots. Despite trying to bend it in the middle, you still see a bend and break at the lower volume button. How much less force would it require if each of the phones were bent on their weak points?

Also, what happens if the direction of the force is reversed? Perhaps they are weaker when the force is the other direction. I am certain we would see a more disastrous result here too, as it would compress the screen, certainly shattering it quite early.

Finally, what happens when the minimal force to bend the phone is repeated? That seems to be one of the key issues with the iphones: They are retaining their bent shape. A little force repeated over time could cause the permanent deformation to get worse over time.

I would really like to see a test where they have 2 static points on the left ( one on top, one on bottom over each phones weak point. ) then have the far right point being the press. This would better mimic a real world situation of being in the front pocket and someone sitting down. ( The top of the pocket, and a crease would hold onto the phone, then the leg bends up applying the force. ) As mentioned, it should be tried in both directions. ( This is definitely an important variable. I'm a screen in guy, but I've known screen out people. One could potentially have a very different result that the other. ) Record the minimum to get a permanent bend. Then repeat that same force to see if the bend worsens over time.

Perhaps some more people can help send in ideas for improving the testing, and actually see some real results from CR. You can email them from here:

http://web.consumerreports.org/customerservice/customer-service.html

T-Mobile boss: 'High and mighty' Verizon and AT&T are 'raping you for every penny you have'

I would love to switch off of Verizon for a cheaper but equivalent service. Too bad nothing is even close. I have truly Unlimited Data and I get 4G LTE in places others completely lose signal. I pay a little more, for substantially better service. I also have student and military discounts which I would probably lose if I switched.

Want a cheap iMac? TOO BAD. But you can have a slow one for $1,099

Re: You're right for the wrong reasons...

Sorry, it was hyperbole. I wasn't saying it would be exactly as good, just pointing out how terrible it is. I'm perfectly aware that they are entirely different.

The comparison I would like to make would be the Alienware Alpha. However, they have been a bit vague on the exact specs. Core i3 Haswell CPU ( Ok...which one? Is it mobile or desktop? That's a huge range.) 4GB RAM ( Ok, that's definitely lower, but it's upgradeable whereas the iMac is not. It's very cheap to upgrade, and you will even be able to order it with more from the store. ) Discrete Nvidia GPU with 2GB of dedicated RAM ( This will be ahead of the Intel in the iMac, question is by how much. The Intel uses shared memory, so there goes some of your RAM, and caps out at 1GB. No word though on exactly what Nvidia GPU. ) Base price for the AA is $550.

There are other "Form Factor" PCs out there, which you can easily get faster than the iMac and for cheaper. Add in a decent monitor and you're golden.

Or, do the smart thing, and just get a proper desktop to further drop the price and improve performance:) I really dislike the idea of the All-In-One. The whole point of those stripped down CPUs and GPUs is to be mobile, yet these All-In-Ones are not meant to be moved. Plug them in, and then they sit there.

PS: For the superior hardware people, Apple hasn't made their own hardware in years. Processors, HDDs, GPUs, screens, etc.

"we don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."

So, instead they decided to make a (over) $1,000 computer that's even worse!

Seriously. Dual core...1.4ghz...Intel graphics? My phone from more than 2 years ago has those specs. It also cost less. That's not a joke. Galaxy s3 is 1.4ghz, dual core and has a GPU as powerful as one of those Intel POSes. It was somewhere around $700 at the time. ( Note: Exact specs depend on the exact one you got. They had a number of variations, such a slower quad core. )

Could they have possibly made a new computer with any worse specs? The Intel 5000 series is slower than a a Geforce 425m. That's not a desktop card mind you, that m stands for mobile! I also just checked on the CPU, and sure enough, that's indeed a mobile CPU too. It's obviously not too surprising they don't have a high end CPU due to the size limitations and all...but an actual mobile CPU? Ouch.

I'm pretty sure for $1,099 I can find a laptop that is faster than this, and we all know how over-priced laptops are. Oh hey, look at that., the first one I looked at: http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-14/pd.aspx ( The base model. ) So, not only is it over-priced for being a laptop, has a CPU that is nearly twice as fast and a GPU that is more than twice as fast, it's also an over-priced Alienware.

All for the same price.

Granted, the screen is absolute crap by comparison ( Alienware is after all, overpriced crap as well. ), but imagine if I tried to compare it to any kind of actual computer. We're talking a $500 desktop and a $100 monitor would run rings around this absolute piece of trash, for nearly half the price!

FAA: All systems GO for Virgin Galactic space plane to launch from US

Re: Comparison with SpaceX

@Richard Boyce:

I think you mean "Will be merely an extremely expensive amusement ride", as they still are a ways off from it.

It's kind of sad really. Virgin Galactic hasn't even gotten close to any sensible definition of space, will barely get there if everything goes perfect, and the top speed is slower than an SR-71. Meanwhile, SpaceX has already ran several resupply missions to the ISS, at about 7 times the speed. ( at least 17,100 MPH to match the ISS, but I believe it's capable of significantly more than that. ) The ISS is also about 3-4 times higher up than Virgin Galactics maximum height.

To top things off, SpaceX just announced their new manned capsule, for carrying 7 people to the ISS.

The way things are going, they're probably going to have a colony on Mars by the time VG gets going!

Organic food: Pricey, not particularly healthy, won't save you from cancer

...While I'm at it:

"Organic" when referring to chemistry does not mean "A molecule containing Carbon." It's actually arbitrary, and yes..all "Organic Compounds" do contain Carbon. However, steel is never considered organic, even though it contains a sizable amount of Carbon. There are many other compounds that are often close, but still considered inorganic. Others, it just depends on who you ask. It's all just down to tradition, and helps with basic organization, but is terrible for anything specific.

"Organic - I don't think that word means what you think it does."

<sigh> Reading posts here is giving me a headache. Almost no one here seems to know what "Organic" actually means.

It means 1 thing: Not artificially genetically modified. ( Though this does apply to both the food and the products used in growing it such as pesticides. )

Organics ARE mostly mass produced by big corporations.

Organics ARE mostly covered in pesticides.

Organics ARE mostly grown with fertilizers.

Organics taste the same as equivalent non-organic. ( As mentioned, this comes down to the actual methods used to grow, how ripe they are, how long they have been sitting, the exact species chosen, etc. )

Further: The pesticides used can often be FAR FAR worse on organics. Remember, DDT is organic.

Now, if you were paying attention, you noticed I did say "mostly" quite a lot. So, while the vast majority are for example mass produced by big corporations, it doesn't necessarily mean that what you buy is. Just like you can get "non-organic" foods that are not produced by those corporations. ( What's really funny is the majority of the time, it's the same big companies doing both organic and non-organic. )

The real differences between organic and non-organic come from the genetic modification. This means a few things:

Organics are by their very nature far more unstable, being specifically bred to choose the ones that do mutate. This means you will be less certain of exactly how it all will come out. One corn stalk might do extremely well, another could be stunted, a third could actually be harmful ( if you're really really unlucky. It's random chance. ) This also means that technically organics have far more carcinogens ( as these are what help to provide an increased mutation rate...really though, the vast majority of the time you can ignore carcinogens. Most things are carcinogenic, just in incredibly tiny rates. ) GMO however, are very strictly controlled. You just spent millions of dollars creating that new perfect corn...you don't want it to go and change on you. ( and in fact, you aren't allowed for it to change. GMOs are required to be certified, and are strictly controlled and regulated. )

Organics use more land, require more fertilizer, and require more pesticides. The genetically modified versions are specifically designed to require less of all of the above. ( Also, technically, organics are genetically modified as well...just far slower and less precise. )

If you care about pesticides, fertilizers, run-off or big-corp: You can't simply buy organic ( or non-organic ), you have to be very pro-active. You need to find out specifically what farm the given food is coming from, and exactly how they handle it. Is that local farm actually owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation? What do they use for insect control, and how much do they use? How do they handle their run-off? Have they had any inspections, and how did they perform? etc. etc.

Wow, gamers on YouTube really love the Xbox One. It's like they were paid to say that (Hint: they are)

Re: Hail mary pass by MS

I don't know where you went wrong Combat Wombat, but you are way off. Xbox One is more than doubling the Wii U. The Wii U has been out for over a year, and the XB1 is almost caught up to it in total sales.

The PS4 is fairly thrashing the XB1 though, at nearly double its sales. Though the XB1 is ever so slightly ahead in the US.

The sales actually go PS4 > XB1 > PS3 > X360 > Wii U > Wii. ( Ignoring portables. ) Descending order obviously.

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

300 MB update

That update isn't just to activate playing DVDs. It's the day 1 update for the entire system.

I find it really interesting though that you can not disable the recording. 15 mins suggest this has to be going to the hard drive as there isn't much RAM, and a large chunk of that will be used by the games and OS. So, the OS, this recording which needs to erase and write periodically ( it'll surely buffer some amount to RAM before going to HD. ) AND the game itself ( all games must be installed to the drive and played from there. ) are all going to be handled by....a 5,400 RPM HDD.

If I get one I will definitely be getting at least a 7,200 drive for the poor thing.

I also wonder how that'll impact the life of the drive. That could be a lot of work to do.

Dog bites man: Apple's Macs trounce all Windows PCs in customer love

Mike Bell:

Congratulations, a sample size of 2 versus a sample size of around 100. You'll notice I mentioned approximately a 10% failure rate. That means for 2, there's only about a 38% chance that either one will fail.

Overheating: Perhaps they've fixed this then, because the ones we had couldn't even browse the web from a solid surface without the fan kicking in. Pretty quickly it would ramp up to max. Just browsing the web, not playing games or 3d modelling.

Trackpad: Perhaps this is fixed as well. This was a frequent problem, after the laptop had been running for a bit and gotten warmed up, the trackpad would stop registering movements. It might also have been related to almost continually using during that time rather than a quick movement or click, then pausing or typing a bit.

Clicking: I couldn't use tapping because it moved the mouse too much. I wanted precision, and there was no way to get it without an external mouse. Again, there was still no reason to not just have a pair of simple buttons! Plenty of room right there.

Bevel: Sounds like another fixed item.

Crashes: Congrats. For us, it was pretty much every single day something crapped out. Several people lost a fair bit of work to that. ( I always make a large number of saves on everything. )

cd ( well, dvd ) drive: Really? They don't even have one now? I mean, sure...it's not used a lot, but it IS still used. Lots of programs and games still come on DVD, some which can not be downloaded. That's even worse.

Dual video chipset: Did they do away with this entirely then? I could see that. It was more pain than it was worth having 2, probably even if they matched. I used to run SLI on my desktop, but it just caused too much issues at times, and the different video chipsets was rather obnoxious.

Steve Todd:

BS! My dad is a metal machinist, and works mostly in aluminum. I have spent most of my life working in his shop. Aluminum, especially they grade they use on Apple products, is a low strength material. It's 2 main purposes is its flexibility ( terrible for electronics ) and being lightweight. I can EASILY warp it enough to cause the disc to hit something on the inside. Just picking it up with 1 hand while the disc is spinning causes this. That's just under its own weight!

Keyboard Eject: You're right, it is there. I had forgotten. However, the issue was still there: It's a software key, and only works while in the OS. There remained no pinhole for manual eject, or a drive based eject button.

Dual Chipset: the one I had was 2 Nvidia Chipsets and the OS did not switch automatically. As I mentioned, it required a full reboot and I selected at the time of reboot to change which video chip was being used. It sounds like they recognized this problem and fixed it. PS: Intels are still chipsets just the same as the Nvidia primary, so they still have 2. All laptop ones are POS, though at least the main card can have dedicated memory which makes a huge improvement.

AC: No, it was a very expensive school. ( $100,000 for 2 years. Not worth it for the record. ) They were brand new laptops, still in box. Not refurbs or anything. Top of the line at the time. I don't remember who the PC manufacturer was.

For those that haven't figured it out yet: This was indeed several years ago. It does sound like quite a bit has been fixed, but these are problems that shouldn't have even existed as fast as they became apparent. There are still plenty of issues with newer ones as well, and there are issues with standard PCs as well. ( For the record, I think the PC name should include Mac just like includes Linux. Mac users would probably flip out though. )

Anyways, my entire point is just that Macs are not nearly the holy perfection they are often claimed to be. Most Mac users tend to overlook their faults, or likely have only experienced low quality Windows machines giving them a poor comparison.

My Macbook experience, and observations of those around me.

I was given a macbook pro for free at my university...and hated it. I mean well and truly hated it. I ended up giving it away, and going back to my 4 year old mid-range Toshiba laptop that spent a year with me in Iraq. It wasn't particularly good, but substantially better than the top end Macbook Pro I was given.

Things I noticed just on the first day:

They had a pretty high failure rate. Out of the nearly 100 people that day given laptops, about 10 failed during first boot and had to be traded in for new ones. Another 10 had issues connecting to the wired LAN. ( I believe that could have been fixed, but they just went ahead and traded in those too, probably to prevent everyone else having to wait on them. )

Overheating is a massive issue. The only air vent is the hinge ( WTF? ), which means if the screen is at anything other than a rather awkward angle, it gets quite warm. Add anything else that might warm it up a bit, and it'll overheat, completely shutting down the laptop. Fantastic.

The trackpad is pretty low quality. It has frequent issues with detecting movement. It sort of acts like a thermal trackpad and the heat from components underneath is interfering with it, but I can't imagine they were that stupid with it, so something else has to be causing it.

To click the mouse, you have to push the entire trackpad down. ( well, without lifting off and doing a touch, which will move the mouse quite a lot. ) This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen on any laptop, right below the air vent hinge thing of course...which is also on the same laptop. Really, it is extremely difficult to click that thing, and not have the mouse move. Plus, it's quite stiff and hard to push, which gets annoying quickly. There's also no reason for it whatsoever. There is plenty of room around it for a couple regular buttons.

The front edge of the laptop lacks any bevel or chamfer, and can cut into the wrist. I personally ended up taking a knife and cutting down that edge. ( Remember, aluminum is NOT some super high-quality material like you hear so often these days. Especially since they use lower grade aluminum. Probably 50-54 or something similar. )

Programs crashed more on Mac than on PC. I noticed this the first day, and had it confirmed constantly in the classes. Some of the classrooms were Mac, others were PC. We used the same programs on both, and every single person in class saved about twice as often on the Macs because they were so much more likely to crash out.

The CD drive is not properly reinforced. It frequently bends and ends up scraping the disc inside.

There is no eject button, or manual eject for the CD drive. This was a bit of a nuisance at times, but became a real problem when I installed windows 7 onto the laptop. At one point, I had a disc in there and had to reboot...except I didn't know I had to have the disc out when I did that. I spent about an hour digging that stupid thing out while trying not to permanently damage anything.

Dual video chipset, but not really. Some genius somewhere decided it was worth having 2 video chipsets, but instead of making them the same to get the performance boost when you want of SLI, they made them 2 different chipsets. The idea being 1 for power tasks, and 1 for saving power. Just to change it though, you had to boot up, select to change, then reboot. Why not just have them the same card, and let me enable and disable them at will. Add in a simple underclocker and voila, power saving. This is what I would do on PC anyways. This would also mean you can have 1 fail on you ( which happens. ), and still get most of the use out of the laptop.

All of this was from the first day with the laptop. I used it for a full year, at which point I no longer needed the laptop for classes and promptly went back to my old Toshiba. Eventually I put Windows 7 on the laptop and passed it off to my mom:) Granted, I don't use any laptop at all any more. I have a custom built desktop PC, and a Galaxy S3. Anything serious I do on the desktop, and the S3 covers portability.

Startup claims 1W wireless charging at 10 metres

2 more things not to forget:

How much would this end up costing just to charge your phone? Thanks to all of the inefficiencies, you can watch your bill skyrocket.

Also, what happens to your phone and its battery when it is trying to charge it all day long? One of the biggest drains on a batteries life is using your phone while it is charging. This is also what causes it to get extra hot.

Yea. I'm going to continue to pass on any form of wireless charging. It's ok, I can manage to plug my phone into a cable while I sleep.

iPhone rises, Android slips in US, UK

Re: I wonder if it's straightforward role reversal

"Feel" is subjective.

I prefer plastic because I know it's superior for a phone. As a GS3 owner, I can tell you it is very solidly made. Perhaps a bit too solid. Much like if you built a car to not get a dent in a 60mph crash is lethal to those inside, building a phone too solidly can be hard on the rest of it, namely the screen. I don't drop my phone, so it hasn't been an issue yet. I preferred the HTC Incredible which was a bit softer. I have a friend that has literally thrown his Incredible against walls several times and it just bounces off. He would have killed an iPhone/HTC One within the first month, and his new GS4 might not last...we'll see.

Anyways, the real thing I wanted to reply to was the flat out lie:

"Apple certainly puts more internal memory in their phones."

The iPhone 5 had the exact same internal memory options as the older Galaxy S3, and less than the newer Galaxy S4. However, Apple charges twice as much for the increased memory options as Samsung does. They charge a full $100 for each of the upgrades. So, it's $200 for the 16GB model, $300 for 32GB, and an insane $400 for 64GB. Samsung had the exact same price for the 16GB Galaxy S3 of $200. Then from there it was $250 for 32GB, and $300 for 64GB.

Then, of course, the Samsung phones have Micro SD card slots that accept up to 64GB micro SD cards, which cost less than $50.

So, tell me again, who has less storage?

WIN a RockBLOCK Iridium satellite comms module

OH/COCK

Operations

Halt

/

Canceling

Of

Catastrophe

Killswitch

Apple tops target list for litigious patent trolls

Re: Bloody hell

The English language happened.

It's always been this way. Just look at Shakespeare. He invented dozens of words and tons of phrases.

Not saying the previous "apple's tops..." doesn't bug me too, just that all sorts of changes have been going on for centuries, and have led to the rather miserable language we have today.

There, their, they're. <sigh> That should not happen in a language.

Planetary data merge shows three Earth-like planets in close star system

Psst...it says "up to" 10 times the mass of Earth. The other 2 both have lower masses.

In fact, the prime candidate, planet f, is only 5.68 times the mass of the earth. If the diameter of the planet is 2.4 times that of the Earth, it would actually be slightly LESS than 1G.

Unfortunately, it may be awhile before we know the actual size of the planet. Especially to any certainty. However, this clearly shows that as it stands right now, it's a great candidate for life.

Judge sets the date for Patent Smackdown 2: The Damages

Re: So $600m is already agreed?

Quite backwards. The $600m is what has already been thrown out.

Granted, this upcoming trial could raise it back up to the 1.05 billion, or even more. It could also drop everything entirely and find that Samsung owes nothing.

One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

Re: Glass is a solid - simple experiment

@mtp: To add onto this, we can just look at the OP.

In the pitch drop experiment, the pitch sits inside of a glass funnel, surrounded by a glass bell, and drops into a glass beaker. None of the glass has deformed, while the pitch has flowed enough to drop nearly 9 times now.

Next, we can also add egyptian glass beads that have been found. These beads still have the center hole, and maintain their round shape. So, we can now say that even on a scale of over 3,000 years, glass does not appear to move at all.

Glass is NOT a liquid like pitch is. This has been proven false a number of times.

The old theory was that glass was thicker at the bottom because it was a semi-liquid, and gravity slowly pulled it down.

However: More often than not, the thick part of old glass is not at the bottom. In many cases, it is even at the top. The glass is not thicker in some places due to it flowing, but rather because it was not formed on a perfectly flat table.

Amazon yanks SimCity download from store

Re: Fuck EA

Already did. Same exact situation happened with Diablo 3. Online only, massive rush clogged and tore apart their server. People still threw money at them. A few got refunds, but plenty just let it go.

Looks like it's just a UK thing ( possibly EU? )

amazon.com shows all of the versions are in stock and available.

Still not going to buy it. I saw the storm coming with Diablo 3 and made sure not to buy that game. I new we were looking at the same thing with Simcity.

It's very simple: I will NOT buy a single player game that requires internet access. Period.

Curiosity photographs mysterious metal object on Martian rock

Original Image

Here is the original image showing the object:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00173/mcam/0173MR0926020000E1_DXXX.jpg

It's official: Mac users are morally superior to Windows users

Ok, I have to be missing something.

The average for Windows users was 137.

The lowest browser was 138.

I (briefly) looked into Qgiv, and all I saw was a web-based donation system.

So, if you have to use a browser to donate, and the lowest possible is 138, how do you get an average of 137?

Samsung, LG 'lose confidence' in OLED TV tech

Well, plenty of uHD content does exist...just not for TV.

PC games scale. Yes, you would need either a fairly new video card so you can have a Displayport socket, or you could have 2 DVI-D cables ( which goes back several generations, but is much more of a clumsy solution. )

Personally, I hope to see a uHD computer monitor soon. Although, I hope they aren't as ridiculously priced as the 1600s still are. Seriously, you can get a 10" tablet for under $500 that is 2560x1600 but if you want just a 2560x1600 monitor it's over $1000 in most cases:(

Also, the fact that I haven't even seen a hint of a uHD monitor, suggests to me that these screens won't be anywhere near main stream in 2013. People won't care about uHD in large numbers until the price gets fairly close to current screens. ( Both TV and Monitors. ) Typically, the $1,000 mark is when things start to shift.

I could be wrong, and hope I am, but I don't see that happening in the next year.

Hexing MAC address reveals Wifi passwords

Well, at least the source article doesn't try to say you have to convert a mac address into hex.

On the down side, it also brings up the fact that these passwords are also ridiculously easy to crack since they too remain in HEX.

I can think of dozens of simple methods using even just the mac address that could result in very complex passwords involving any key on the keyboard.

Instead, they have a total of just over 4 billion possible passwords ( 8.5 billion on some models )...making a brute force easy. A standard PC is looking at less than a single day in the worst case.

Curiosity clears Mars radiation levels for fleeting human visits

"There are also radioprotectant drugs used on Earth to treat radiation exposure"

Uhm, not really. I am not aware of any valid scientific evidence of anything that protects against radiation.

There are 2 possible things you were thinking of here, the most likely being those radiation pills that were handed out during chernobyl and fukushima. These pills do not directly protect against radiation, but simply help the body remove certain elements such as Iodine and Strontium. These are by far the most dangerous releases from both accidents as the body focuses them in relatively small areas ( in the case of Iodine, it's in the Thyroid Gland, massively increasing the chances of Thyroid Cancer. ) Naturally, these would not work at all on Mars as you are not ingesting radioactive Iodine there. There are indeed some pretty nasty potential side-effects from these, but it's better than cancer.

The second possibility is a pair of herbs that each had a study done and found the blood samples tested were partially protected against the effects of radiation.

Sounds good...until you read that the test contained a whopping 5 samples. If you tossed a coin 5 times, and got tails 5 times..I'd hardly say that's evidence for a coin always landing on tails.

Then theres also a bunch of typical new age claims with absolutely no real evidence. They couldn't even be bothered to do a test of 5 samples.

Apple unveils tightened Mountain Lion requirements

"If not, worry not – the version of OS X that you're using today will not suddenly cease to function on the day Mountain Lion is uncaged."

Don't give them ideas. They already want to solder everything to the board, use proprietary screws, and bury everything. I'm pretty sure the only reason the OS doesn't self-destruct the minute a new version is released, is because they haven't thought of it yet.

Is the Higgs boson an imposter?

If you go back to the actual announcements, you will find that they worded things very carefully and specifically mentioned that their discovery could be one of many different higgs particles. The discovery was merely that they did find something where they were looking, and now they are on to the part where they try and figure out what that something is exactly.

Also, mass and fast decay were not the only issues that had to be overcome. The particles that the Higgs can decay into are some of the most common decay products. This is why the LHC had to be designed to run continuously, and smash incredibly large amounts of material ( well, for a particle accelerator ) together. They needed incredibly massive numbers of collisions to spot the incredibly tiny variation in the amount of decay products.

Apple 'fesses up: We broke App Store downloads

Interesting. So, it looks like all of this was also another case of DRM hurting the paying customer, but not pirates. <sigh>

Take a look at atom’s shadow

Re: that's actually pretty cool for Australia’s :)

The link provided at the end of the article contains the actual image. It is a bit odd though for the article to refer to "this image", but not having the actual full image provided. However, you will notice that the illustration includes a slightly modified part of the actual image ( cropped and increased contrast. )

Google Chrome serves up only emptiness, for many users

Better fix...

As per the thread linked in the article, a much better fix is to clear your cache and cookies from a week or more back. I suppose this is why I haven't had the problem, as I recently cleared mine a few days ago.

Star Wars: The Old Republic preps pre-order pages

SW:TOR

"The game itself is yet to receive an official launch date, although is widely-expected sometime in November."

Most estimates put it in Sept. actually...but the key there is estimate. No one has any clue at all really. Official word from Bioware is "2011" and nothing else, not even the smallest hint ( other than when it comes time to announce the date, we will know they are getting ready to before hand. In fact, Stephen Reid the Senior Community Manager is supposed to take a picture of himself in a conductors hat to let us know when that train is coming, lol. )

Anyways, hopefully the ridiculous price rumors of 175+ are false as I really want this. Regardless, I can't wait! This has been a really long 3+ years.

BioWare blows brains with intro cinematics for Star Wars MMO

GO TOR!

I'm on of the Oct 08ers that have been on the forums since they existed:)

Head over to swtor.com for tons of gameplay videos, and another TWO CG videos that are just as good as this one. ( Deceived and Hope )

Oh, and there's lots of non-jedi/sith...in fact, half of the classes are not jedi or sith. You have Republic Troopers from the Havoc Squad, Smugglers, Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters.

Well, I gotta head out, I might pop back in here to say a bit more about it. I'm zechio on the tor forums if anyone wants to say hi for any reason.