deanb

This. But not quite. My dad n step-mum were broken into a year or two back. As part of insurance payout they got a jewellery card of sorts with £4000 on it. They've kinda struggled to spend it all and it runs out in November. So yeah I got to pick a watch for myself (and they said it could be a late b'day present). Thing is later gong through the receipts of the day, the shop assistant had only rung through the earrings that got picked up alongside my watch (parents also had a voucher so had made up the difference). So a tripley free watch for me. (Turns out my step-mum had a similar experience with another shop of same chain in Darlington where in ringing through stuff ended up crediting my step-mum for the value of the bracelet instead of charging for it). It's a neat little thing, solar powered with the waveceptor stuff (auto-correcting time), and your usual bells n whistles. Not as blue as the image though. And before someone makes a comment on my taste in watches: I've never been keen on the full metal band stuff, I like the combi-display Casios. At least it's not a G-shock. Or the..I think it was Diesel. Garish orange things.

I think now they're popular they've done their PR and it has worked, onward to new markets. Episode at hand: First, watch Truckers.

http://imgur.com/a/2rXdM It's an album. As a taster:

In order for Apple to be able to do "Group SMS", something that SMS doesn't support at all, they have to pull quite the hack. This hack works seamlessly for other iOS devices, they're built to accept this hack of SMS, but every other device built to comply with the SMS standard doesn't work with how iOS does a group SMS. I'm not saying that MMS isn't the standard, it's Apples "Group SMS" stuff that is non-standard. It's a bit like MS and their old use of their own HTML. Worked fine if you used IE, but sucks if you were on a standards complaint browser. Yeah it works out neat if you're within that ecosystem, but if you're not then it kinda fucks you over. As for MHL that works over micro-USB. As does data transfer and charging, and it complies with EU electrical waste directives. Apples "Lightning" doesn't. USB is a standard that has been around for nearly two decades now and has frequent updates, so hardly something to be locked down to. Unlike Firewire which Apple have since ditched last year in favour of Thunderbolt and no doubt will be ditched again. Oh n here is aforementioned EU Directive (Which aren't exactly laws, but close enough), and as you can easily see the point of the directive is to cut down on electrical waste and having adaptors of all shapes n sizes to both fit to older existing iPod accessories and the Micro-USB standard doesn't do that at all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19667664 Ig Nobel 2012 awards. As usual it's in some cases rather useful, albeit weird, research.

Which advert? The S3 advert shows the NFC with the two girls pushing their phones together to send the photo they just took. There is a Wi-Fi share though, which yeah is pretty old hat. Though I'm with FDS, Apple don't do things in a standard manner. Like SMS standard. As for the Micro-USB adapter I wonder what the fuck is being sent in manilla envelopes to EC over here cos the micro-USB adapters go against the idea of going all to Micro-USB to reduce electrical waste. And now they have a ton of adaptors for their new plug too :/ Yet I've not seen a single rumble on that front for going after Apple on flagrantly ignoring the directives.

The Lego games Steamworks?

Apple still don't have NFC support, so they wouldn't be able to do it. Also you only know one other Android user? Small pool of friends or a very weirdly lop-sided one? (Though I'd agree it's odd that here 2/3 phones in this house are One X's)

Switzerland and Sweden are actually not the same countries Stupid early morning reading.

So in case no one has heard, Apple Maps sucks. Big time. (Also if anyone wants a job Apple have posted up 7 software engineer positions for Maps) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19659736 http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/ It is generally recognised to not update to iOS6 if you use Google Maps a fair bit. (There's also no guarantee on Google releasing their own maps app, they've only promised and delivered on the Youtube app replacement) Also Apple have fallen afoul of copying a Swedish train/clock firms clock design without license. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57517054-37/apple-accused-of-ripping-off-famous-swiss-clock-design/

That'd be my point. Nope. No it didn't.

New blog post up: Kickstarter Is Not a Store Definitely a policy aimed at specific projects that harms every other one in its broads strokes. But I do agree with the sentiment.

That's how timezones work. I did previously spell out how that'd work with a physical release: It's not really asking much and it's kinda sad that requesting a game launch at a reasonable time, especially with the magical wonders of digital gaming, is now considered "entitled". I'm waiting for the time I'll be branded "entitled" for moaning that a game is sold as if it's in a reality where $=£=€ and not one where such a thing as exchange rates exist (And it'll also once again be an American, one who doesn't deal with the shitty end of that set-up, that'll call me "entitled" too.) Kinda wanted to give the MP a spin with Connorr, but alas. Other than that it's as good as the beta version was. Maybe a few tweaked animations as best I can tell (skills tree has been redesigned too). Making my way to the end of where I got with the beta at the moment.

I'd guess from scratch. The rough of Tamrieal isn't like some clay you can mold, refine n detail. It's really rough polygon geometry, it'd all need chucking out. But it would be neat to be able to walk from Skyrim to travel into "Skywind"

Wait, it's now "selfish" to play games in your own timezone at a reasonable hour? Have you stepped back once and read what you're writing? That you're contrarianism is at such a degree you would argue that morning game launches are "special treatment". That even a midnight digital release is "special" either is a bit of a stretch too for the many outlined reasons. The Reddit AMA was a chunk of the team and the 10AM their time was giving my several members of the team, there was consensus. I honestly see no reason why I should be ashamed of anything. I'm not the one from a position of relative privilege branding folks "entitled". Anyway you're right I can bitch about other things, like the MP servers being down due to a simultaneous global release, as I called. Hard to be ashamed when you're proven right.

There's not really any default document viewer. I guess it would also depend on the document viewed. My phone came with Polaris Office included, though it could be a PDF reader (which might make sense) or anything else. While the NFC is showmanship, they do require something to trigger the intent. Throwing a file on Android won't do much unless you go and activate it, and then pick your "document viewer" from there. The main weak link in it all does seem to be the unnamed document viewer. If you wanted to install stuff on an Android phone it's much simpler than using NFC; just work your way into their Google account and hey presto. As for the "RFID at 69 feet" thing, this would be it, and it's not your average phone equipment. (Though yes rather impressive for what is mean to to be a rather close range tech)

As I said, midnight would be awesome, morning would be reasonable. At least we agree on that. Reasonable size would be yeah, over two dozen folks. Small would be like 7 guys, like Introversion n such. And way too big would be the Ubisoft factory-studio thing. Why do you carry on saying that expecting a game to come out on the morning of launch day like the games have done for the past 30 odd years is "special treatment" (yet also say "Regular time is in the morning"). It actually didn't. 6PM (and a bit) to be super specific. They didn't need to go into details, just say "Yeah that 6pm time is right". Since when is asking simple questions entitlement? They clearly had the time to give three response (of which one actually said Steam was wrong...yet turns out it was right), while still not giving a specific time until later on Reddit. All that changed was a couple of hours and the website. Apparently you give a fuck enough to be reading and responding. And I never once said they should bend to my specific needs. Repeating the phrase that a morning launch like every other game is "special treatment" doesn't make it so. edit:

1) Ad homiems all you can still manage? 2) Hoping for a game to launch at a regular time isn't "special treatment". Special treatment would be being pissed off if I hadn't got a press pass or something. 3) This is a reasonable sized studio of industry veterans releasing their second game as a studio and umpteenth game in their careers. Being American doesn't really negate much in having a badly planned launch. 4) *10am PST. And if it came out at 10am local time I'd be fine. 5) The devs were unable to give a straight answer to a simple question (yet a few hours later were able to answer that question fine in a Reddit AMA), I have all off today free, thus able to be up at midnight, or 9am or what not. Yet the game doesn't launch until the launch day is nearly over. Tomorrow onwards I have things planned*. 6pm is a really shitty launch time, and there's pretty much no reason for it beyond being ...Americans. Which isn't really a reason.

Maybe, but NFC is a bit new for television to wholly embrace. Don't forget we're still in the age of tracking IPs with a visual basic GUI and hacking better by having two people on a keyboard at once. Bluetooth is old hat n folks know what it is, thus a simple concept to throw in without having to At least we're past the age of hacking through 3D mazes (but still in an age where people think the Jurassic Park GUI was made up and not a proper UNIX UI)

He knows. I was going to link in his post from Steambook earlier, but I can't figure out how the hell you get links to individual statuses.

It doesn't make "perfect sense" at all. There's some sense in the "we'd like to be up n awake to fix the issues we expect" but they've since pointed out that the game is in fine playable order (meaning about the only issues to expect would be the MP servers collapse under the weight of a simultaneous global launch, something negated by a nice old fashioned rolling release) There's not an ounce of "perfect sense" in releasing a game at such an absurd time. Should Torchlight be an disc release on a console, with all the constraints that digital releases lack, I would currently be about two hours into the game. But because it's a digital release and thus has a rather wide range of benefits over physical releases, such as having the contents of the game installed on my PC the past 3-4 days, being able to release whenever, etc etc, I am instead waiting until 6 o'clock at night. Imagine if this was a console release, and you had to wait until 6pm before the store would sell you the game because it has to match up with the developers timezone. You're there at Gamestop, they've got a stack of games behind the counter, in fact they've been stacked there the past few days, but because of the developers absurd restrictions you have to sit around until 6pm, right around the time the physically constrained store shuts, before you're able to get hold of the game. At what part does any of this make perfect sense, in either a physical or digital sense? As for the different release date things, yeah Borderlands 2 is coming out on the 21st in Europe, the day after Torchlight 2's release date. Yet it comes out 6 hours later. This is a game that due to having a simultaneous console/physical release actually has the constraints of a physical release, hence coming out several days later, yet is still able to embrace the benefits of digital where it can get them.

There's a reason DOD use Android phones. Anyway NFC is as much an "exploit" as WPS since...well the N = Near. You'd have to be right next to someone to do anything with it. The article also fails to mention which document viewer had the flaw. Which makes the App the insecure one not the OS. As for POI: highly likely it's just a case of TV magic. Bluetooth usually requires a PIN or other phone owners acceptance.

A regular old "release at morning" launch would be fine. And as I've already spelled out a midnight launch for a Seattle studio matches rather finely with a regular work day, and one would hope that any launch niggles could be sorted out before it becomes midnight in their own territory thus allowing them to walk away happy that they can just let Steam do its thing. I am keeping in mind they've not set a time on when it's happening, that's where part of this all sparked off. Their inability, with less than 24 hours until launch, to point at a clock and go "we're launching it then". They've already managed to point at the calendar and pick a Thursday of all days. And expecting to be able to play a game on launch day, not launch-whatever few hours are left, is "entitled"? Moving into the ad homiems now eh? Dean would like to play this game he's being looking forward to on the launch day, not the launch night. What a self centred entitled cunt. Haven't really asked for much special at all. Just a nice bit of a global parity to get just a 10am launch like America would be nice, not really asking much special in that. Just wanting to play a game on launch day, not having to wait until all the local gaming shops, that you would buy old fashioned disc based console games from, are all shut up until I can play my game. I don't know why you have issue with that request. I'm sure if you were waiting around until 6pm to play you'd be asking the same questions I am. But hey, you get a reasonable 10am launch, so you're not, you're on the side calling the folks having to wait until night "entitled" for requesting parity. You live in a country where you don't have to fear that the game might be launched in a language you don't understand, where you don't have to hope a game studio won't lump you with a censored copy to comply with another countries laws, you don't have to wait months for a game to be translated into a language you'll never need to use despite the game being developed in your language in the first place. It's not really entitlement to ask for parity in an age where it's all technically feasible and the branding of "entitlement" is hard to take seriously from someone who gaming wise is sitting on a velvet throne at a sumptuous feast. @FLD: The last game I had unlock on Steam was at midnight. And this was a game I'd gotten on an old fashioned disc not a wholly digital release. Didn't even get a pre-load (so technically 12:20). And as noted Codemasters (UK-based) F1 game is getting a midnight release, they'd have to be awake for 5am local time when that midnight launch hits the east coast. Being almost at the end of the timezone actually gives Runic an advantage in that regard. edit: They're currently doing an AMA and have said the code is actually pretty much ready to launch and playable(It has been the past few days that folks have been reviewing it too). Meaning that the wait until a 6PM (or whatever) launch is pretty much unrequired. In fact it's not the only post querying the time: http://www.reddit.co...tors_of/c6ale5o http://www.reddit.co...tors_of/c6aleus