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DRM Needs to die: EA has it’s own taste of server crashiness…

by
Mike
Posted March 9th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Simply put: DRM sucks. It's bad for consumers and it's bad for CS at the companies that decide to use it. The only people who are harmed are the very people the companies claim to protect. This time, it wasn't another Ubisoft snafu (they had their stint over the weekend). Instead, just as Ubisoft begins to rub the weekend hangover junk out of their eyes, EA figures it's time to have a miniature catastrophe of their own. Yes, EA's DRM servers crashed too...
One of the more popular and new...
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Alright Case Mate, that’s an inappropriate hug!

by
Jordan
Posted March 9th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Okay, really? Really? I'm going to ask all of you readers a quick question, first, have you ever wanted your iPhone to be about 2 to 3 times as thick as it already is? Do you think the entire World is going to be made out of Case Mate's charging pads? I didn't think so, but Case Mate thinks you do, and want to pay 100 bones for it.
With all the ways to charge your iPhone out there, Case Mate quite possibly stumbled upon the "greatest" way to do it, well, if you answered 'yes' to my two questi...
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AT&T gives us yet another reason to avoid Moto Backflip: Blocks unofficial/non-market app installs.

by
Mike
Posted March 8th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Thinking of picking up AT&T's new Moto Backflip Android device? Don't! This isn't the first time we've highlighted how the Backflip is a monumental piece of garbage mind you. Nor am I the only person to blow the whistle on such a fact. The boat loads of AT&T crapware that big blue crams inside should be reason enough to avoid this POS. But it get's worse, way worse. AT&T has caught a case of iPhone-itis and simultaneously failed to understand the open nature of Android by a new revelation ...
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Energizer USB Duo charger refills batteries with juice, PC’s with Trojans.

by
Mike
Posted March 8th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Somehow I don't think this is exactly what Energizer had in mind...
Users of Energizer's USB DUO Battery Charger are going to want to sever all connections to their computers ASAP. According to the US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team), USB DUO installs a silent yet rather nasty trojan virus that effectively turns your PC into a bot, allowing outsiders access to your PC and digital belongings, and ultimately, gives them total control.
Woried users should pay close atte...
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Ubisoft definitely on illegal narcotics: Our DRM servers failed because everyone loves them so much…

by
Mike
Posted March 8th, 2010 at 10:56 am
That old saying "what kool aid are you drinking" couldn't be any more perfect in the situation involving Ubisoft and their new "always on" DRM. We've already ranted about it several times before for it's awful implementaion and methodology. Yesterday we found out just how much it sucks when a game that requires a live connection to a remote server has said server go down...for hours on end. Common sense would have the company admitting they screwed up and at the very least apologizing for sho...
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Skype and Verizon’s holy matrimony: Will it hurt Skype in the long run?

by
Mike
Posted March 6th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
I'm sure many of you have heard about Skype's buddy buddy deal with Verizon Wireless and the subsequent vanishing of Skype's mobile apps in various mobile app stores. Windows Marketplace, Nokia Ovi Store, Apple App Store, Android Market -- they all have seen Skype disappear/lose functionality/fail to gain new functionality within the last week. For instance, Apple's Skype has long been promised to gain 3G VoIP support after Apple and AT&T finally got a few ducks to line up. After the announcem...
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And the stupidity continues: Apple yanks WiFi scanner apps…

by
Mike
Posted March 4th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Apparently ruffling the feathers of countless devs and customers over the whole Boobie Ban of 2010 wasn't enough. Besides, if you sit there long enough, you could rationalize that porn really isn't that big of a market. But what about something more useful, say WiFi scanning apps? While bare bones basic WiFi scanning is built into the phone for when connecting to a WiFi network, there are numerous WiFi scanner apps that divulge a slew of helpful information regarding IP addresses, DNS's, etc....
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Verizon Wireless having network problems? [Update 2]

by
Mike
Posted March 3rd, 2010 at 6:38 am
Update 2: By now, everyone should be back up. If not, well, hit up VZW customer service. Apparently the issue was relegated to the east coast, not national. Are you back up?
Update: Is "the network" back up? I have some emails flowing in again and a 3G icon has reappeared on my DROID. Anyone else? As far as I've seen, no official reason for the outage has been given yet.
Wondering why you can't access those early morning articles, Twitter updates, and other data related tasks on yo...
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From the department of WTF: AT&T replacing Google search (and services?) with Yahoo equivalents.

by
Mike
Posted March 2nd, 2010 at 10:32 am
Now before we go any further, I'll make known that I understand Google isn't Android and Android isn't Google. Google just so happens to be one of the biggest OHA members who puts the bulk of marketing dollars behind the mobile OS. With that said however, so far Google has been Android. Any Android device you pick up that's been labeled a "Google Experience" device as been stuffed full of Gmail, Google Maps, Googlve Voice, etc. A tight knit blend of hardware and software. AT&T is set to sta...
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Playstation Network and consoles inoperable, rich people cry [Update]

by
Jordan
Posted March 1st, 2010 at 10:44 am
**Update: According to Sony's blog DON'T use your PS3 until Sony says otherwise. Quite a bug we have here, isn't it?
**Update #2: It seems Sony has fixed the bug, it seems that users might have lost their trophies, but our friends over at Joystick have a Q&A on what to do.
Anyone here happen to be playing some marginally popular PS3 game yesterday just to have the Playstation Network up and die on you? After the rage subsided, did you happen to notice even offline play not working? ...
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Survey says: NBC blows Olympics, sucks at life overall…

by
Mike
Posted February 28th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
It's no secret that the general consensus surrounding NBC's handling of the Olympics is that it sucks. Plain and simple -- horrible. Between tape delays, "old farts", and utter lack of any real selection of online content means for an increasingly digital generation, the Olympics was an epic let down. Don't believe me or the countless other sites highlighting such travesties? Just look at Crimson Hexagon's data (above) collected across various online sources, namely 20,000+ Twitter posts and...
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EU lays down the law: Google has to re-snap all of EU land every 6 months.

by
Mike
Posted February 26th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
In the current economy, acquiring or even maintaining a job is pretty hard stuff. If you are lucky enough to keep a job, work is often sporadic and pay is stagnant or reduced. "Job security" is highly sought after. If job security is really what you're after, Google is "the" place to be -- specifically the Street View team.
A new EU ruling documented in Article 29 states that the current 12-month time span is a "too disproportionate" amount of time for images to be stored. Ok, fair enough...
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Ubisoft’s new DRM: Bad for gamers, bad for soldiers, bad for America. Essentially, bad for the planet.

by
Mike
Posted February 24th, 2010 at 4:20 am
I've seen plenty of articles criticizing Ubisoft's latest DRM scheme. You know, the one requiring you have to have a constant internet connection where an interruption in your service, if even for a split second, will cancel your current game and fail to save any progress. Ya, it is an epic failure on paper and in practice. How anyone could think this is a good idea is f*cking stupid. Ubisoft has tried defending their position basically saying that from their viewpoint, they believe that the...
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Apple puppet Phil Schiller on the App Store booby ban: Boobs are only ok from “household” names. Double standards ooze out of every pore…

by
Mike
Posted February 23rd, 2010 at 5:20 am
Like heaping piles of BS early in the morning to get your morning off to the perfect cynical start? Well aren't you a lukcy human, you've come to the right place. As you all may know, Apple recently went an a great purging of any titillating and "sexy" apps from the app store. Thousands of apps showing boobs, butts, and stomachs were removed from the App Store because apparently, "women and children were bitching in mass numbers". The real factoid that pushes this from stupid to utter BS how...
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About that amazing Nexus One display…

by
Mike
Posted February 22nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
If you still feel that your Nexus One is the king of crop as far as smartphone displays are concerned, you may not want to read this. (Spoiler alert: N1 display isn't so hot!) Care for more info? Right, cheerio then.
Looking at the picture above, one can easily see the difference between the top (iPhone 3GS) and bottom (N1) displays -- the latter looks like junk. It looks like junk if you know what you're looking for that is. That striping non-sense is called banding, and it's a good ...
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Best way to discourage use of “electronic distractions”: Dunk a laptop in liquid nitrogen and proceed to smash it on the floor like a baby…

by
Mike
Posted February 21st, 2010 at 3:58 pm
When a teacher or professor bans gadgets, laptops, or electronics outright from a classroom, I generally write off said individual as technologically incompetent and failing to understand the benefits of technology as a whole. In the case of OU Physics Professor, Kieran Mullen, that ideology stands. Apparently, students bringing laptops to class and then working on assignments instead of fixating on the 'ol prof 100% time got his blood all boiled. The cure: bringing a busted laptop to class, ...