Something good from the LucasArts closure.
After LucasArts closure, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy go open source | Ars Technica
Author: Aditya
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Who’s Going To Buy The Facebook Phone?
Wonder whether this will prompt Google to give a similar treatment to Android with Google+ and its plethora of services? Or “better” yet, to the next Nexus device. After the Google+ification of search, anything’s possible.
But that’s hardly the entire phone market. It’s actually only a fraction of it.
- What about those millions of people who have bought Android phones — and some iPhones, probably — who don’t really care that they’re Android phones, or even smartphones?
- The types of people who, every couple of years, go into the Verizon or AT&T shop and walk out with whatever newish thing the store rep says they should buy? (All those people who buy Android phones but don’t really show up in usage logs.)
- Or even first-time smartphone buyers?
My guess is that many — most? — of these people are Facebook users, and could easily see some utility in having Facebook features highlighted on their phones. And — bonus — Facebook’s software looks good. Much better than the junk that ships with typical low-end Android devices.
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Interplanetary Cessna
We could all be Superman on Titan, but we’d have to beat the cold first (72 K):
In fact, humans on Titan could fly by muscle power. A human in a hang glider could comfortably take off and cruise around powered by oversized swim-flipper boots—or even take off by flapping artificial wings. The power requirements are minimal—it would probably take no more effort than walking.
via xkcd – what if.
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Google Play Movies finally in India
It launched last week in fact, but missed it somehow. Prices seem pretty competitive with the India iTunes store, though HD seems to be missing from many for now. Rental is also available for the latest movies including “The Hobbit”.
So, all we have to do now is wait for the Nexus 4 & Music on the Google front and iBooks from Apple.
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How Fast is Your Smartphone/Tablet in PC GPU Terms
GPUs are definitely a step ahead of the CPUs, and they need to be given the kind of display resolutions in play on mobile devices. So, here we have a comprehensive benchmark of the mobile GPUs against desktop GPUs from 2004-2007:
Given that most of the ARM based CPU competitors tend to be a bit slower than Atom, you could estimate that any of the current crop of smartphones delivers CPU performance somewhere in the range of a notebook from 2003 – 2005. Not bad. But what about graphics performance?
…
At the end of the day I’d say it’s safe to assume the current crop of high-end ultra mobile devices can deliver GPU performance similar to that of mid to high-end GPUs from 2006.
AnandTech | The Great Equalizer 3: How Fast is Your Smartphone/Tablet in PC GPU Terms.
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Joel on The Patent Protection Racket
How long before the trolls invade India (or have they already)?
Civilized people don’t pay up. They band together, and fight, and eliminate the problem. The EFF is launching a major initiative to reform the patent system. At Stack Exchange, we’re trying to help with Ask Patents, which will hopefully block a few bad patents before they get issued.
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Apple Inc.: Founding and incorporation – Wikipedia
There is a reason why Apple has better things to do than create gags on April 1:
Apple was established on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit.
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Another bout of cleaning
I haven’t done too many long posts in some time and with Google Reader’s announced demise, I decided to cleanup the blog look drastically and eliminated the sidebars. Don’t think the widgets in the sidebar were getting too many clicks anyway.
Instead, I’ve added a widget for the blog’s facebook page, and gone with a minimalist template. Let me know what you think about the new look.
