Monthly Archive:: June 2013

"In recent years, an odd consensus has arisen where many believe that games are easier than they used to be. In many cases it's true, and it isn't surprising, as extreme competition between titles has created the need for games to be immediately entertaining as soon as you press the start button. As a consequence, many older - and potentially newer - players consider these games of yesteryear much more difficult. The immense challenge Wii U owners have experienced with virtual console games is evidence of that. Are these newer adventures really easier? Or has the design philosophy for video games improved instead?" Interesting take. I will tell you this, though - take a game like Dragon Age (the only one that matters, so the first one). It's immediately accessible to newcomers at the easy and normal setting, but try stepping it up to nightmare mode, and you're suddenly back in old-fashioned hardcore territory where you'll need to apply every little bit there is to know about the game to be able to finish it (tip for DA fanatics: finish the game without a single character going down in combat, on nightmare. I did it. It's hell). My point is: sometimes, you have to up the difficulty or create your own challenges to find the rewarding difficulty of gaming yore.

"Japanese firm Systena Corp. has announced the first Tizen-based tablet, which also appears to be the first Tizen product of any kind. The unnamed Systena Tizen tablet offers high-end features including a 1.4GHz, quad-core Cortex-A9 system-on-chip, 2GB of RAM, and a 10.1-inch, 1920 x 1200-pixel display, specs which come close to matching the most powerful Android tablets currently on the market." Interesting.

"BlackBerry offered few signs of a long-promised turnaround on Friday, with an unexpected quarterly operating loss, a dearth of details on sales of its make-or-break new line of devices and no return to profit expected in the current quarter. BlackBerry shares tumbled about 28 percent in both U.S. and Toronto trading." 'Unexpected'? Really?

"Microsoft's Build developers conference in San Francisco has mainly focused on Windows 8.1 so far, but the company spent a few minutes talking about the future Xbox One development platform on Thursday. Steve Guggenheimer, vice president of Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism group, provided big hints at how developers can target the Xbox One in future." Many Windows 8 Metro applications would work relatively well with Kinect gestures and such - so this makes sense to me. Still don't want a 'media entertainment experience device' though; I want a game console.

"This document outlines the set of requirements and guidelines for file and directory placement under the Linux operating system according to those of the FSSTND v2.3 final (January 29, 2004) and also its actual implementation on an arbitrary system. It is meant to be accessible to all members of the Linux community, be distribution independent and is intended to discuss the impact of the FSSTND and how it has managed to increase the efficiency of support interoperability of applications, system administration tools, development tools, and scripts as well as greater uniformity of documentation for these systems."

"Market trends in Western Europe are not looking good for Apple's iPhone. 'Apple's iOS continues to lose ground as market share declined to 20% from 25% in 1Q12 ', IDC said Tuesday. Android, meanwhile, is gaining operating system market share, up 14 percent year-to-year in the first quarter. 'Android continues to dominate the smartphone landscape', according to IDC. In the quarter, Google's OS shipped 21.9 million units and market share increased to 69 percent in the first quarter of 2013 from 55 percent in last years' first quarter." On top of that, Apple got knocked out of the top five in India, where it's also bleeding market share. The America-centred large technology sites that dominate our reporting often fail to spot this huge problem for Apple: the company is only doing well in the US. It's losing everywhere else. And just in case you don't know: 'everywhere else' is 95% of the world, and that's where future growth is to be found. The fact that Apple hasn't addressed this yet is exactly why its shares aren't doing stellar anymore.

The Linuxed - Exploring Linux Distros website has over 170 reviews of distros and common Linux programs by Arindam Sen. What makes it special is that Mr. Sen puts his experiences together in useful charts, such as this one that compares RAM usage for twenty different GUI versions, or this one that compares CPU and RAM usage for 20 KDE distros (page down to see the chart). While the site says it's merely "A non-techie's view of the Linux world," many techies will find it useful as well.

Pretty cool stuff: the PlayStation 4 apparently runs on a version of FreeBSD 9.0 modified by Sony and renamed to 'Orbis OS'. Second generation developer kits use GNU GRUB to boot, and allow you to boot into a graphical or a console mode. Not much else is known at this point, but it's a fun bit of information, and perhaps a boon to homebrew developer and hackers.

"Apple's new iOS 7, which the company unveiled last week at its Worldwide Developer Conference, says a lot about the future of mobile devices because Apple owns the future of mobile devices." If you're an Apple fanatic, you're going to love this article. If you're not an Apple fanatic, you'll be shaking your head in disbelief that the once great AppleInsider runs stuff like this these days. Hey, there's always MacRumors - the last great bastion of proper Apple rumour reporting.

"Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency. The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate." Woah.

Reddit user mr03 created a very thorough visual comparison to show just how much Android has changed over the years. No text, just pictures. It's amazing how dated older releases look.

So, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft was very close to take over Nokia, but that the talks eventually broke down, probably beyond repair - at least for now. The reasons the talks broke down illustrate something that I have repeatedly tried to make clear for a long time now: Nokia isn't doing well.

"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.

"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.