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Items of Note:
Aaron and Gozer were the guests on TechTubs episode 19. A special thanks to Kory and Dave for inviting us onto their podcast, where we had a lot of fun talking about Bing, the Chumby and more! The episode is available now at http://techtubs.com/2009/11/15/episode-19-geekcasters.
Want an easy way to become a fan of the show on Facebook? Just text “fan TheGeekcast” to FBOOK (32665) from your mobile phone, and you will be added as fans instantly!
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Geek This Week:
Aaron: Fall TV: Stargate Universe, FlashForward, Fringe. WTF happened w/ my interest in Dollhouse? It’s canceled anyhow and Chuck comes back in January!
Gozer: Modern Warfare 2:
Single player – Airport level? Controversial? I love the missions on american soil especially defending burger town. I think it is better than COD 4. Every mission is like WOW, i just love looking around and enjoying the view. The last mission i played really made me feel a bit emotional like this can’t be happening. Totally effective in making you feel something instead of just running around shooting people.
Spec Ops: Played a bit co-op tried some levels in alpha. Bridge level, horde mode snow level & stealth snow level.
Multiplayer: Really enjoying multiplayer. They’ve added soooo much as far as killstreaks. In COD 4 there were only a few killstreaks. UAV’s , helicopters and some sort of bombs.
This time you have:
3 Kills – UAV
4 Kills – Care Package
4 Kills – Counter UAV
5 Kills – Sentry Gun
5 Kills – Predator Missile
6 Kills – Precision Airstrike
7 Kills – Strike
7 Kills – Attack Heli
8 Kills – Emergency Airdrop
9 Kills – Pave Low
9 Kills – Stealth Bomber
11 Kills – Chopper Gunner
11 Kills – AC-130
15 Kills – EMP
25 Kills – Tactical Nuke
Deathstreaks are awesome. You are rewarded for dying 3 times! IF you die 3x you can steal an enemies weapons to hopefully give you an advantage.
Guns of choice: Scar with red dot sight or holographic. AA shotgun. Still don’t like the Acog sight. Alot people playin sayin they love it. The sight is just too big and cuts off your vision.
New Super Mario Bros Wii:
Totally old school. This game is almost like it came after super mario land for snes. I was a bit apprehensive about multiplayer on a 2-d platformer but it works really well. Anyone who started in the 8bit era and skipped over everything else, could easily pick up this game and feel completely comfortable. Alot of throw backs to the original games along with some new things.
There are some new suits including: twirly hat suit thing, shrinking mushroom that gives you crazy speed and a penguin outfit. If your partners or partners die than they return to the screen in this bubble thing where you have to pop them in order for them to get back in the game. Also you can pick each other up, for example, my wife was having trouble with this one part so i just picked her up and finished the level.
My wife and i played and Trauma was coming on last night, it was about 8:50, and i said why don’t we stop and she said no lets keep playing the tivo is recording it. You know right before you go to sleep you say i love you and all that crap? My wife actually turned over to me and said i loved playing mario with you today.
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Tech and Gaming News:
Survey: Third of teens text while driving
Despite increased publicity over the dangers of texting while driving, many teenagers (like many adults) have yet to get the message. A third of cell phone users aged 16 and 17 admitted to texting while driving, according to focus groups and a report released Monday by Pew Research. For the report, “Teens and Distracted Driving,” Pew surveyed 800 kids aged 12 to 17 about their cell phone use in the car. Teens 16 and 17 years old were asked about their role as drivers, while younger ones were questioned about their experiences as passengers. Of all teens surveyed, 75 percent said they own a cell phone and 66 percent of those text. Half of teens 16 and 17 who own a cell phone said they’ve talked on the phone while driving.
Among passengers, 48 percent of teens 12 to 17 said they’ve been in a car while the driver was texting, and 40 percent have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put everyone in danger.
Though some teen drivers said they only text at a red light or will hand the phone over to a passenger to text, others didn’t seem to care about the risk.
Pew found one high school boy who said he thinks texting while driving is “fine,” adding, “I wear sunglasses so the cops don’t see [my eyes looking down].” A high-school girl admitted that she texts “all the time,” and that “everybody texts while they drive…like when I’m driving by myself I’ll call people or text them cause I get bored.”
Many teens expressed concern about being in a car while the driver is talking or texting on a cell phone, noted Pew. But in several cases, the driver was the teen’s parent.
“I am concerned because when my mom drives she talks on the phone a lot so she is still alert but she can get kind of dangerous,” reported one young teen. Another boy said, “Yeah [my dad] drives like he’s drunk. His phone is just like sitting right in front of his face, and he puts his knees on the bottom of the steering wheel and tries to text.”
This latest Pew research confirms a deluge of other studies about the dangers of cell phone use while driving. Onestudy by the VirginiaTech Transportation Institute found that truck drivers who texted were 23 times more at risk of a “crash or near crash event” than “nondistracted driving.”
A Vlingo survey from May discovered that 26 percent of mobile phone users said they texted while driving. A test conducted by Car and Driver magazine showed dramatically slower reaction times by two drivers who tried to brake while texting.
Early Pew research from 2006 (before texting became widespread) found a quarter of adult cell phone owners felt that using their phone compromised their ability to drive.
Certain states, such as California, Connecticut, and Oregon have passed laws banning texting or talking on a mobile phone while driving. The U.S. Senate is currently looking at a bill that would give federal dollars to other states who pass similar laws.
In late September, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood held a summit to discuss the issue of distracted driving. Around that time, President Obama signed an executive order banning federal workers from texting while driving.
Pew’s Internet & American Life Project conducted its survey of 800 teens last summer. Pew and the University of Michigan also held nine focus groups with teens 12 to 18 between June and October to discuss the issue of driving and cell phones. Pew’s results included the findings from both the survey and focus groups.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10399522-94.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Verizon responds to AT&T’s Map For That lawsuit: ‘the truth hurts’
Sure, Verizon’s doubled down on the 3G map ads in response to AT&T’s false advertising lawsuit, but eventually the company’s lawyers had to file a response and, well, ain’t nobody backing down in this one. Here’s the freaking introduction:
AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.
Yeah. It’s gonna be like that. Verizon goes on to argue that even AT&T concedes the maps are accurate, and that pulling any of the ads off the air without proof that they’re misleading consumers would be unfair, and that at the very least both parties need time to investigate further. Honestly? We’ve read it over a couple times now and while the legal arguments are certainly interesting, it’s hard not to get the impression that Verizon drafted this response with publication in mind — check out this quote:
In the final analysis, AT&T seeks emergency relief because Verizon’s side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison of its own 3G coverage with AT&T’s confirms what the marketplace has been saying for months: AT&T failed to invest adequately in the necessary infrastructure to expand its 3G coverage to support its growth in smartphone business, and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly.
See what we mean? Now, we still think there’s some merit to the idea that Verizon’s ads improperly conflate 3G coverage area with 3G service quality, but that’s really not what AT&T’s arguing — hell, it’s busy pimping EDGE. We’ll see if these two can solve their differences and get back to work, but we’ve got the feeling this thing ain’t over yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/16/verizon-responds-to-atandts-map-for-that-lawsuit-the-truth-hurt/
Modern Warfare 2 Sells Nearly Five Million Copies In A Day
According to “internal Activision estimates”, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 didn’t just have a good launch, it had “the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment”.
This claim is based on sell-through sales, with Activision bean-counters reporting the game managed to pull in $310 million in its first 24 hours on sale. And that’s not a worldwide number, that’s just in North America and the UK. $310 million. In a single day. In three countries.
Sure, games cost more than a movie ticket, but $310 million in 24 hours is still a mighty impressive number, regardless of the admission price.
That $310 million was earned off the back of an estimated 4.7 million units sold, another frightening number when you consider it’s again excluding sales from all the other PAL territories.
http://kotaku.com/5402968/modern-warfare-2-sells-nearly-five-million-copies-in-a-day
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Test a Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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How To: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Open Source Software: Boxee
Boxee – http://www.boxee.tv – XMBC, Front Row, VLC, Windows Media Player/Center
Background of my use – running on my 2.0ghz c2d 1gig ram 120gb HDD mac mini connected to my 37″ Vizio 1080p LCD TV and a 5.1 surround system, using the Boxee App on my iPod touch to control.
In the new age of high definition content, every consumer electronics company is trying to get their box into your living room to deliver HD content. There are many solutions that do work very well, such as the xbox360 and the ps3 as well as the popcorn box and roku box, but the problem with those is that they are all “walled gardens”; they work very well within their own ecosystems but not outside. Most, if not all, of these systems are limited to specific codecs at specific resolutions in specific containers such as mp4 and avi, however not all HD content is delivered in these specifications, so getting the content on your TV can be difficult.
This is were boxee comes in. Boxee is a fork of XBMC (xbox media center) that is designed from the ground up to be used on a computer connected to your HD TV. In Nov 01 the xbox came out and was modded 6 months later and one of the first big homebrew apps to be released was a media player. Over the years, this evolved into a VERY sophisticated application called XBMC, which was capable of playing almost all video files thrown at it, as well as being beautifully designed and easy to use. The big problem with it was that the hardware was limited to the xbox and its 733mhz processor wasn’t up to the task of HD. XBMC was then ported to PC, Mac, and Linux and was started to be used in home theater setups but the interface was still a little complicated for use on a TV, so boxee was born.
Originally only available on Linux, boxee was very quickly adopted for use in HTPC’s (home theater pc) all over the geekdom. Boxee was much more suited for the living room due to its easier to use interface which could be operated with either a mouse or a remote with ease. Boxee even has a built in server to control it from another pc, or even more useful, an iPod touch/iPhone app is available for free from the App Store. With boxee, you can stream your HD content from any type of file server, play it off the computer locally, off disc, thumb drive, external hard drive, basically any way you want to get your content onto it it will support it. It supports all major file formats and codecs, including the popular MKV format and plays h.264 beautifully, I have yet to throw a file format at it that it cannot handle.
What sets boxee apart from most other media center applications are the applications. There are dozens of applications available to boxee, including a Hulu app for watching Hulu programs, apps for most if not all networks that offer episode streaming, youtube, podcast rss support, and many, many more. Watching Hulu on a computer screen at your desk is one thing, but having the ability to easily watch it from your couch on your HDTV is a completely different beast.
Believe it or not, but boxee also has a strong social media aspect as well. You have to make a free account with boxee to run it and you log into boxee when you launch it. Once running, you can compile a friends list of other people using boxee and it will compile on your home screen a list of videos and movies that your friends recommend.
Boxee is compiled for use on Mac, Windows, and Linux, as well as the Apple TV. You need to hack your Apple TV to run it on it, and the hardware is limited so you really won’t be able to get 1080p off it, but it rocks the socks off of front row.
If you own an HDTV and are looking for a great way to get content delivered to it, give boxee a try, you won’t be disappointed.
Big thanks to listener Mark for giving us this fantatic write-up about Boxee!
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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The Geek’s View: The Orphan on Blu – Ray
I didn’t really want to see this movie cuz i thought it looked like every other movie. I really liked it. The story is basically about this couple who has 2 kids already and the wife is trying to get over a tragic miscarriage of their third child. The opening scene is extremely graphic and kind of uncomfortable to watch. The couple goes to an orphanage to find a child to adopt. The come across “Ester” who is quietly painting alone as the other children play outside. The find her interesting and choose to adopt her. This is not a supernatural triller. It looks as if it is from the trailer. This is just a triller. This is the kind of movie where the villian is only seen as a villian by some of the main characters and not all of them. Slowly things begin to get crazy.
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