Recalls. Don’t ya love ‘em? Today’s featured recall is rather large, affecting up to 500,000 Sony Vaio F and C series laptops sold since January 2010. Apparently a “thermal defect” is preventing the laptops in question from being unable to properly cool themselves, resulting in warped laptops and burned appendages.
According to Sony, downloading a simple patch can make random melting issues cease to exist. Or, you can have Sony come pick up the laptop and do it themselves. (Weird)
If you’re rockin’ one of Sony’s hot Vaios, are you really going to send your laptop off for a downloadable patch?
To many people, bitching about a video game’s DRM that resorts to requiring a constant internet connection seems stupid and like a waste of time. In the grander scheme of things — it is. But, if you focus on the core technological aspect of it, DRM is not a solution but a “fuel” to the piracy fire, only driving scores more towards paying less and less for products and services. Ubisoft as of late has found out just how much the tech crowd hates DRM with extremely vocal outcries thanks to the nonsense that encompasses Assassins Creed 2 and it’s “always on” requirement.
Ubisoft tries to hide this blatant misuse of technology as a help to consumers with cloud based game saves and backups. The real reality is that at any point, they can download, install, and run rouge apps in the background whenever they feel like they need to milk you for more money. The point….
Ubisoft’s grand DRM servers that power Assassins Creed 2 and other newer titles with always on restrictions have choked and died — hard. According to an Ubisoft rep:
…clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored.” The representative added “I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future…
The only way we won’t see more of these happenings is to drop DRM altogether. It’s a simple, no-brainer decision. But sadly, it will never happen. Any Ubisoft gamers feeling a bit burned and murderous at the moment…?
Joystiq
- December 16, 2009 8:52 am
Energy efficient traffic lights seem like one of the best ways to save local governments significant amounts of money of the course of 5, 10, or more years. The lights which often use LED technology are much less demanding on the power grid which in turn means more money for other things. But there’s one side effect many have overlooked. Heat output.
Remember, the higher the heat output of a light, the more energy is being wasted. That’s all fie and dandy for indoor lighting or lighting or “non-critical outdoor lighting”. You see, the city of Chicago is discovering that the lack of heat output because of the new LED traffic lights’ increased efficiency is actually creating another problem — increased snow build up leading to a higher number of accidents.
It’s an easy concept to understand. Traditional traffic lights generate heat which in turn melts the snow off of the actual lights keeping them free and easily seen. LED’s with their much lower energy consumption and heat output allow snow to build up as temperatures aren’t getting high enough to melt the snow. It’s a sad side effect really as now numerous people are being injured and potential lives lost. Even still, it would be foolish and hasty for the city of Chicago to backtrack on their “green rollout” by replacing the more energy efficient traffic lights with the older style simply to melt snow for a few months out of the year. Though for an easy and quick fix, swapping the lights may be the only answer.
I’m not a civil engineer in Chicago so I don’t know how they went about the big switch to LED bulbs. Can they simply replace the bulbs with traditional lights or do they need to change the entire fixture? On the surface, such a switch seems like the best way to go as I don’t see any quick, easy, and cost effective way to “warm up” LED traffic lights. Future models of LED traffic signals could have an electric heating element of some sort built into the light housing as to melt the snow. But again, that doesn’t help the thousands of currently deployed lights on the streets. Not to mention, adding such a feature will no doubt add to the cost of energy efficient traffic lights — lights which are already a fair amount more than traditional lights.
Of course, cities employing LED traffic lights have another option — have city workers clean of the bulbs by hand. It’s not quick and it isn’t exactly a very good “fix”. For the time being however it is the only viable option to keep the LED’s and reduce traffic accidents.
To highlight the point further, many cities in Wisconsin have been migrating to LED lights for some time now. In fact, there are so many “modernized” traffic lights — numbering in the hundreds — that the state is saving over $750,000 per year in energy costs. It may not seem like it would make a huge dent in the state’s budget, but every little bit helps. Not to mention, I’m sure their are more than a few hundred traffic signals in Wisconsin. Just imagine the energy savings if all of them were converted to LED. Simple solution: Take a tad of that savings and hire an extra body or two during the winter months to aide in cleaning LED traffic lights off. Sound easy enough?
Some will never be pleased however as several are calling for the city to abandon the move to LED traffic lights until a new design emerges that can actually be self sufficient in cold, snowy weather. Such things are again short sighted. While a price tag can never be placed on a human life, removing technology — a very needed and important one at that — simply because of a minor problem is a bad decision.
Any Chi-town residents care to chime in? Have you personally witnessed any accidents due to LED lights being covered by ice and snow?
Chicago Tribune
