MADEOFWINANDAWESOME

Hate those stickers all over your laptop? Good news: So does AMD

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I hate all those stickers on the palmrest of laptops.  On PC cases as well for that matter.  It’s almost as bad as the stickers ricers put all over their cars.

They wear off, get dirty, and the $1 per hour staff at the manufacturing facility can never get the damn things on straight – even when there are lines or bars on the plastic to line them up against!

Luckily, my Alienware rig has the stickers on the bottom, so the laptop looks clean and nice.

AMD also dislikes this practice and is discussing either making the stickers easy to remove with no residue or possible disbanding the nasty habit altogether.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Obama Administration: Piracy == Theft

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According to US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke the Obama Administration is going to go after pirates and reform copyright.

“As Vice President Biden has said on more than one occasion, ‘Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,’ and it should be dealt with accordingly.”

No, Gary. It’s not. How do these idiots get so highly placed in government? This man needs to be removed from office for reasons of clear mental incapacity.

Piracy is not theft. The act of theft by its very definition implies the taking of property without consent and with intent to deprive the owner of its use. Copying a song over P2P does not remove the original, no one is deprived, and it is done with consent of the owner of the file. Filesharing is no different from making someone a mixtape. Just because the actions are on a larger scale and take place on the Internet do not mean it is theft.

Also, last I heard, the music industry and Hollywood are still doing pretty well.

I have no problem going after commercial pirates who are selling counterfeit copies of goods on a large scale, but we need to spread the message that non-commercial filesharing is not theft.

Lastly, if you are in the music business to make money – chances are you aren’t making good music anyway.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Best invention of all time!

This has to be the best thing ever invented.  We need this to be replicated by Molson Canadian or something…

Popularity: 7% [?]

Microsoft raises price of XBOX Live subscription

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MS has put up the price of a year subscription to their online gaming service by 10bucks a year starting this November.  I really don’t understand why MS even charges for their XBOX Live ‘service’.  They are not hosting servers, all the data is carried by users’ ISPs… so why do they need more money?  Server CPU, storage and bandwidth costs have all dropped, not increased.  Shouldn’t this ‘service’ be getting cheaper? More »

Popularity: 17% [?]

Craigslist ad for ‘PAX Nerd Orgy’ bombs, turns into a sausage party

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An ad placed on Craigslist for ‘a bunch of us like minded adults to get together in a hotel room and have a friendly adult party’ is bombing big-time.  Why?  Because even though the male:female ratio at PAX is better than any other gaming convention it is still heavily slanted towards men.

No surprise then, the poster of the ad has had to provide an update asking for more women or couples to ask for an invitation.

“Update: Getting too many responses from single males, so will not be accepting any more for now. If you are a single male and you already replied, I need to see what we have for couples and single females before you get an invite. No single males have an actual invite yet.”

Duh… No matter if you put mw4mw on your ad, most of the people going to PAX are dudes.  And chicks that would be interested in orgies, probably don’t want to have them with a group of sweaty chubby nerds.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

From the ‘Not News’ dept: iPad Owners are ‘Selfish Elites’

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Consumer research firm MyType conducted a study, in which opinions of 20,000 people on Facebook were analyzed between March and May. The firm’s conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, ‘selfish elites.’  This surprises no-one.  Well… except that the iPad owners are highly educated – I would expect educated people to be better with their money and not fall into Apple’s hype trap.

More »

Popularity: 31% [?]

MS killed cross-platform gaming because console gamers suck

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According to Rahul Sood (founder of Vodoo PC), insiders at Microsoft say that a project to allow cross-platform gaming between PC gamers and players using the Xbox 360 console was scrapped at least in part because the console gamers were not up to the challenge.

Rumor has it that there was a project many many months ago at Microsoft that was under wraps. The goal was to bridge XBOX gamers with PC Gamers so they could play against one another in games like Unreal, or Gears of War. This was all part of their Live strategy, and had Microsoft just stuck to their guns and made it work PC Gaming might be in a much better position than it is today.

Apparently the console gamers got their assess handed to them so badly over and over and over again that going ahead with the project that “it would be embarrasing to the XBOX team in general”.

This isn’t news to PC gamers.  First, the keyboard and mouse pwns any gamepad – even with the help and assists afforded to gamepad players on console games.  Second, console gamers – for the most part – suck.  Anyone playing a game with a gamepad that is possible to play on PC with a keyboard and mouse is a total noob.

I agree with Rahul, its too bad this initiative didn’t go through.  This project could have shed more light on PC as being the true gaming platform.

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Popularity: 29% [?]

Apple leads with most security vulnerabilities in its software

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Secunia research has released that in the first half of 2010 Apple had the most security vulnerabilities in its software, displacing Oracle.  Microsoft has the #3 spot.  Since 2007 the balance has shifted from Microsoft to other 3rd Party vendors.

Now, this doesnt take into account the severity of the flaws in question – but it is important to note that Apple software IS NOT better secured than the software from other major vendors.  At best, its on par.

Fanboys and skeptics will tell you that Apple’s software is the most secure on the block – but Apple is slow to patch, often leaving vulnerabilites out there far longer than Microsoft does.  As Apple gains more marketshare you will see how bug ridden their software is as hackers turn their attention to it more and more.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Worlds first Pirate ISP launched in Sweden.

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Of course, this happens first in Sweden.  And, of course its backed by the guys from The Pirate Bay.  The new ISP service will be designed to deliver consumer internet in line with the Pirate Party‘s ideals: competition, privacy and anonymity.  The ISP will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs.

According to Gustav Nipe, longstanding Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP, will roll out big by the end of the summer.  Currently the ISP is serving 100 residents of a building organization in the city of Lund for initial testing.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Porn: DRM free and making money hand over fist.

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As stated in this post over at NewTeeVee one of the largest players in the porn industry doesn’t use DRM and is still raking in huge sums of cash (about $29 million in revenue in 2009).  Only a really small percentage of pron producers and distributors put DRM on their products, and they seem to be doing just fine.  Porn has historically kept at the cutting edge of technology and has fully embraced the digital age with streaming and downloads everywhere.

Private Media Group CEO Ilan Bunimovitz told NewTeeVee:

“Free and pirated content is available regardless of whether the encoding is done by us or not… The way to fight piracy is not to limit who you sell content to, it’s by fighting pirates,”

Regarding embracing portability to all platforms ““Once you (buy) this piece of content, it’s yours on any screen you own”, explained Bunimovitz.

Here, here.  Now if only Big Media would take the hint…

Popularity: 64% [?]