Gadgetopia

The People Have Spoken: ‘Spore’ Is Ruined By Its Own DRM: Will the DRM argument come to a head over Spore? Gamers are pissed at the Draconian DRM that comes with the game.

Judging by the reviews on Amazon.com (120 and counting) [103 are 1-star…], the public reaction to EA and Will Wright’s hugely-anticipated epic Sim-everything game, Spore, has been overwhelmingly negative.

The huge majority of the complaints seem to be aimed at one particular aspect of the game - not the gameplay itself, but EA’s decision to include the SecuROM DRM (Digital Rights Management) system. The much-maligned system only allows the game to be installed 3 times, before requiring a phone call to EA to request an extra activation.

Google sees new browser displacing desktop software: These are probably the most telling comments yet on Google Chrome. If it’s not obvious by now what Google is trying to do, Sergey removes all doubt here:

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

“I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world,” Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters. “They have become kind of bulky, they have to do lots and lots of different (legacy) things.”

Google believes any task done in a standalone desktop computer application can be delivered via the Web and Chrome is its bet that software applications can be run via a browser.

“We (Web users) want a very lightweight, fast engine for running applications,” Brin said.

“The kind of things you want to have running standalone (on a computer) are shrinking,” he said, adding that he still edits photos on his computer rather than using a Web program.

Netbook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: I remember when this was called the “Internet Appliance.” I had an i-Opener at one time, complete with “Pizza” button.

The term netbook was re-introduced by Intel in February 2008[1] to describe a category of small-sized, low-cost, light weight, lean function subnotebooks optimized for Internet access and core computing functions (e.g., word processing) — either directly from applications installed on the netbook itself or indirectly, via cloud computing.[

Intel PCs will take a wake-up call over the Net: I feel like boot and hibernation recovery times will have to come way down for this to work well.

Intel is unveiling new technology that will let computers wake up from their power-saving sleep state when they receive a phone call over the Internet.

The new component Intel is announcing Thursday will let computers automatically return to a normal, full-powered state when a call comes in. The computer can activate its microphone and loudspeaker to alert the user, then connect the call.

I wonder if there are security implications here at well. Refer back to our post on “Can You Crack an Unpowered Computer?.”

Old-School Text Adventures Come to the iPhone: There’s something very pure about a text adventure game.

[…] Craig Smith has released an iPhone version of Frotz, a program based on Infocom’s original Z-machine engine — it’s what powered all the text adventures of old, everything from the Zork trilogy to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

What Frotz on iPhone does is give you access to many [text adventure] games, both in terms of finding them and then playing them. The free app comes pre-loaded with a few public domain titles — including the original M.I.T. version of Zork — but you can also access download repositories directly from within the app.

Eat me, Grue.

When Your Computer Listens to You: David Poque reviews Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, and it’s pretty impressive — easily the best voice recognition demo I’ve ever seen.

In a neat twist, he has his hands tied behind his back, and does the entire review while Naturally Speaking is transcribing it.

Microsoft to sell Office, security software subscription for $70 a year: This has been rumored for years.

I think it’s a response to the growing competition from things like OpenOffice, Google Docs, and the general lagging need for a productivity suite anymore. Office used to be simply required for a business user. Not so much anymore.

Microsoft will begin selling its Office programs to consumers on a subscription basis starting mid-July, in a bid to reach thrifty PC buyers who would otherwise pass on productivity software.

The software bundle, which also includes Microsoft’s Live OneCare computer security software, will be sold at nearly 700 Circuit City stores for $70 per year.

I support and manage a number of Windows desktops as part of my job, and have been a little frustrated lately, having to put off even trying Vista on our network because the database software package we run just doesn’t play well with anything but XP Pro. XP Pro is a must. Period, end of discussion.

And with Microsoft starting to play hardball, telling PC manufacturers that they have to quit selling machines with XP bundled & move to Vista, it appeared as though buying anything with XP Pro is only going to become more difficult as time goes on. Dell — the 500lb gorilla of the PC industry — is still selling machines with XP Pro preinstalled (with a Vista installer thrown in; what’s that saying about the value of Vista?), but even they will have to succumb to the 5,000lb gorilla at some point.

Then today I read a piece on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) about how chipmaker giant Intel has reportedly “found no compelling case for adopting Vista.”

What a relief. I feel a bit better now.

via NYT by way of TUAW

Microsoft and Harrah’s unveil high-tech interactive bar table : The Microsoft Surface video that came out last year was the butt of many jokes (“the future of computing will be a big-ass table…”), but lookie here…

Microsoft and Harrah’s Entertainment introduced a high-tech interactive bar table Wednesday that lets patrons order drinks, watch YouTube videos, play touch-screen games and even flirt with each other.

Not a bad price either, though I doubt it’s a money maker for Microsoft:

The six rectangular tables with built-in 30-inch flat screens using Microsoft Surface technology were installed in a lounge at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, with custom applications built for Harrah’s.

A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the units sold for a base price of $10,000.

Researchers: Choose the red team in online games: A question for the ages is answered.

It’s better to be on the red team than on the blue team in an online multiplayer shooting game, according to researchers.

[…]55% of the time, the red team won, according to the study published this week in the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior.

Although we look at this as funny, I wonder what the real mechanism behind it is? A 10-point margin probably isn’t just a statistical variation.

Could it be that people who are more aggressive by nature are more attracted to red than blue? Could it be that blue sticks out better against the background in-game?

Power Bills Soaring? Turn Off The Playstation - Study: This looks like a job for Kill-a-Watt.

The recent study by Choice said Sony Corp’s Playstation 3, closely followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and plasma television sets, consumed the most power out of a list of 16 electronic devices tested, including laptops, stereo systems and DVD players.

“Our tests found that leaving a Playstation 3 on while not in use would cost almost… five times more than it would take to run a refrigerator for the same yearly period,” said the study

If we install everything proposed by Internet Explorer… : I’m surprised it even ran.

Trends: Cloud Computing and Content Management: Fascinating commentary of how environmentalism and “cloud computing” relate. It discusses how cloud computing and the “you never have to throw anything away” mentality contribute to what seems to be an ecological disaster. Bytes on disk, it turns out, are not free, either in a financial or environmental sense.

In fact Cloud Computing simply means moving things to big and bigger Data Centers. Data Centers are anything but fluffy. They are huge, energy-sucking giants — many the size of small towns. They are environmental disasters and the only thing fluffy about them is the C02 emissions they belch out. Data Centers will in time according to The Uptime Institute become bigger polluters than the aviation industry. Data Centers require massive amounts of energy to operate — often as much energy is used to cool the centers as to power them. All that heat has to go somewhere. If you think your air conditioning unit is an ecological no-no, then consider the AC demands on a data center the size of 5 football fields […]

The argument at the end is that efficient email archiving management can reduce your stored email by 90%.

Netflix Roku Is Here, And The Set-Top Boxes Keep On Coming…: Good job to Netflix for getting this out ahead of Blockbuster. This is one step closer to the Holy Grail of media — the ability to watch anything, on-demand.

[…] Netflix seems to be the winner in terms of pricing: the set-top box should leave all competition behind with its $99 price tag, with a $9 monthly subscription, and an improved sound and image quality. And that’s not all, if we consider the installation issue is in fact not an issue, but a very simple process.

(Note: Read the first comment to this entry. There’s more to the story than what I wrote here.)

Oh Yeah? Fork You!: Pidgin, the IM client, forked over — get this — a resizable text entry window.

The developers, for whatever reason, dug in their heels on this one and refused to budge. You can read through some of the commentary on the bug ticket to get an idea, but the general tenor was combatative bordering on hostile. The bug was eventually closed as “won’t fix”.

The community’s response was swift: Oh yeah? Fork you!

Jeff points out the possible outcomes:

The fork dies […] The fork merges […] The original dies […] Both original and fork survive

None of those sound great to me. I hate forks.