ThePowerGeeks.com

We are LIVE on Ustream.  This week we talk Costumes from SDCC, Blizzard makes Diablo fully online, and lots of apple talk

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• Great Costumes from SDCC 2011 (btm)
  • Careful, some are a little saucy.

• Batman: The Last Laugh
  • Fan Film Done Right

Gold Sponsors:

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Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Happy Pandas, or Unicorn Treats, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Release

• New DVD Movie Releases
  • Rio, Rio 3-D BR
  • Conan the Barbarian (International Cut) – Conan the Destroyer, BR
  • Braveheart / Gladiator BR
  • Eastbound & Down S1 + 2 (think KSwiss)

Entertainment Geekly (new feature)

• Die Hard 5 Rumors
  • Yipee – Kai –  Why???
  • possibly directed by  Noam Murro (300 prequel, Xerxes)
  • Set largely in Russia w/ his Son, blah blah blah

• Cowboys & Aliens
  • Released and achieved #1 in the US (barely beat out the Smurfs)
  • What have yall heard and do yall plan to see?
  • Harrison Ford is looking rough

Geek Speak

• SDCC Talk (Kristin, etc)
  • New Movies (Spiderman, Ghostrider, etc)
  • Costumes
  • After-parties

• Video Graphics x 100,000, Real or Fantasy (sm)
  • A company claims to have moved from Polygons to pixel/atoms
  • “Improves the quality of computer graphics infinitely”
  • In todays technology, times a 100,000
  • explain polygons
  • Changing from polygons to atoms

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Apple Antics
  • Apple has more money than America? (btm)
    • Latest news from the US Treasury is that the United States has an operating balance of $73.7 Billion
    • Apple’s most recent financial reports shows it’s reserves at $76.4 Billion
    • The US is spending approximately $200 Billion more than it takes in every month.
    • Apple, meanwhile, is raking in cash with it’s latest quarter showing 125% more income than this time last year.
    • What’s Apple planning to do with this extra cash?
      • Industry watchers think they are building a war chest to be used for later acquisitions for other businesses and technology patents.
      • Barnes and Noble bookstores and Netflix have both been identified as possible targets.
    • There’s also this really cool house on Pennsylvania Avenue they might be interested in. it’s white and we all know how much Apple likes white products.
  • Skype gets posted for iPad then promptly pulled
    • for a long time, no approved Skype app optimized for IPad
    • Presto, inadvertent publish and then a prompt pull by Skype itself
    • Hopefully means it will be released shortly
  • Apple blocks Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia
    • Claims 10 patent infringement including slide tab to unlock
    • Australia actually honored the injunction, Korean company has to respond
    • This after newest Galaxy Tab compares favorably with IPad 2

• Nintendo President Takes 50% Pay Cut to Reduce 3DS Price (btm)
  • The slow selling 3DS is cutting it’s price from $249 to $169
  • This means Nintendo will be losing money on each sale.
  • To help with the loss company president Satoru Iwata told shareholders that he and other executives will be taking a significant paycut.
  • He will be taking a 50% cut while directors close to the project are giving up 30% and other executives will be losing 20%

• Internet Enabled TVs Interfaces just got better (SM)
  • Ever get frustrated with your TV’s interface?
  • Most TV’s are internet connected nowadays but are a pain to setup and maneuver
  • Heck, if you own cable, you have plenty of on-demand but GL getting to it
  • Poor Interface design makes users not want to use your products
  • Insignia (owned by BB) recently has gone to the TiVo interface to solve that problem
  • Still no DVR included out of the box or over-the-air program guide
  • Wait-and-see but its a step in the right direction

• Blizzard Makes Diablo III Require An Internet Connection (udg)
  • Remember how Ubisoft has managed to upset just about every gamer on the planet by requiring an always-connected machine to play its PC games? Well, Blizzard is doing the exact same thing with Diablo III. That’s right Diablo fans, if you want to play you need a solid internet connection. Offline play is just not an option.
  • If you want a reason as to why this decision has been made, Blizzard is happy to provide you with two. The first is of course piracy, which they believe an always-connected game will limit. The second is down to providing a fair game on Battle.net.
  • Blizzard is not allowing any mods in Diablo III and doesn’t want any cheats being used either. The developer states the only way to control this is with a game they can guarantee isn’t running any such additional software. Keeping you online during play apparently solves that problem and means whatever level your character is, is a true representation of the time you have spent in the game, not some mod or cheat working overtime in the background.
  • The final bit of news that has appeared about the game is that buying it might not be the end of your spending. The auction house included in the game will accept real money for buying items as well as allowing you to sell them. Blizzard’s reason for including this is for those gamers who have, “more money than time.”
  • Has Blizzard just made three huge mistakes, or is this what needs to happen for PC gaming to survive? I can imagine a few pre-orders have been cancelled already, and have to question the logic behind what Blizzard is doing here.
  • Diablo has a massive following, yet removing mods, requiring a connection, and introducing cash to the game to get ahead all seem like steps that will turn fans off rather than building excitement for the release.

• Et tu Adobe? (udg)
  • So, along with everyone else ::cough Apple cough:: Adobe is abandoning Flash as well. Their new tool, Edge, still encourages all the “flashy” loveliness, except that if Edge does it- it’ll be CSS, Javascript or HTML5. NOT Flash.
  • Don’t start calling it the “Flash-killer,” Edge is not intended to put Flash out of its misery or even to encourage developers to switch over to HTML5, but rather open up a new development path while Flash development presumably hits a wall.
  • As of right now, Flash can do some things better than HTML5. So it’s still an important part of the web and not going to up and disappear any time soon. . Still, Adobe seems to be well aware that developers will eventually abandon Flash for HTML5 and while they don’t intend to expedite that process, they are doing what they can to grab a piece of the new pie.
  • At the moment, Edge is available, for free, to anyone who wants to see what it can do. The 1.0 version proper will probably launch sometime next year. While Edge is obviously still a very new tool, it holds promise for developers who are looking to move beyond the messy, messy world of Flash and users who are getting tired of not being able to view .swfs on their mobile devices because no one wants to deal with the messy, messy world of Flash. Even though Adobe is allowing Flash to continue kicking around, it’s good to see them with a horse in the HTML5 race. Here’s to hoping Edge can “cut” it, and Flash can slowly saunter off to pasture where it probably belongs.

• Japan Brings Us One Step Closer to Cylons (as usual) (btm)
  • Japanese researchers are working on a robot that reacts to situations by making educated guesses based on past experiences
  • Robot was built on a learning mechanism called Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network (SOINN) which processes information and lets the robot estimate future patterns and networks.
  • Future applications are both endless and a little scary as SOINN allows robots to learn from the Internet and other robots.

• Paypal Strikes Back at Anonymous (udg)
  • I’m sure we all remember Anonymous’ attack on Paypal last year after they bloced the Wikileaks accounts transactions. Well, now they’ve come up with enough evidence to strike back at Anonymous with a lil help from the FBI. In fact they’ve got a list of over 1,000 IP addresses left behind when Anon attacked. (Remember my DOS lecture before?? Yup!)
  • These IP Addresses were left behind from the DDoS attacks which were targeted at PayPal. Those IP Addresses could prove both useful or useless to the FBI as they start their investigation. The DDoS attacks are usually performed on computers that have been infected with viruses so the owner of the machine might not even know they are playing part in the attack. However the FBI may be able to perform forensics on those computers to find out where the infection originated from.
  • I am sure this story will heat up as time progresses, stay tuned for more details.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Castles Made Out Of Human Hair (udg)

• • What goes well with the cultured human hair necklace? A castle made entirely out of human hair, of course! Artist Augustina Woodgate created 3,000 bricks of human hair and built two castle sculptures as part of a series called “I Want To Be A Princess.” One of the two sculptures, called Tower, reaches about four and a half feet off of the ground, and the different colored bricks are simply different colors of hair — the yellowish window framing is made of bricks of blonde hair.
  • Woodgate’s second sculpture, Sandcastle, sports molded tops — similar to how one molds parts of a sandcastle with buckets — that sit atop a chaotic pile of hair, simulating a crumbling base. Woodgate’s hair castles will be debuting at Spinello Gallery in Miami.

• Lithuanian Mayor Says Tanks for Illegally Parking (btm)
  • Arturas Zuoukas, mayor of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius is fed up with illegal parkers.
  • Decided to send a message by driving a Russian tank over illegally parked cars
  • Saying, “People with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders”
  • The shocked owner of the first Mercedes was photographed exiting a shop to find his car crushed by the smartly dressed civic leader.
  • The car was later re-crushed at a local junk yard.

• A Hallow Leg of a Different Kind (udg)
  • A South Carolina trooper says he found a kilogram of cocaine in a suspect’s prosthetic leg, after he pulled over a vehicle for driving slow in the fast lane.
  • The Anderson Independent-Mail reports trooper Brad Davis testified at a preliminary hearing Friday that he felt an odd bulge when he patted down Glodualdo Moreno Lojan. Davis says a plastic bag was stuffed between Lojan’s leg and his prosthesis.
  • Lojan and two others in the car face cocaine trafficking charges.
  • Davis says he pulled over the car with Texas plates in July for traveling 50 mph in the left lane on Interstate 85.
  • Lojan’s attorney, Kurt Tavernier, says the car should not have been stopped, since 50 mph is over the minimum highway speed.
  • The three remain in jail without bond.

• Computer Conducts Wedding
  • Guy in Houston couldn’t find a friend to officiate his wedding so he writes a program to do it for him
  • Called it Rev. Bit
  • he programmed Rev. Bit to declare at that most poignant moment during the ceremony when last objections may be raised: “If anyone here has anything to say that might change their minds or has any objections, they do not want to hear it and I will not recognize your objections since Miguel has programmed me to only recognize his commands.”
  • Get this, met his wife on “Sweet on Geeks”

Extra Links

• Square handling 4 million in payments daily

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