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Comment: Re:People associate it wrongly (Score 1) 209

by shawb (#35456030) Attached to: Microsoft Patent Deems Comic Books Shameful
Unfortunately, prospective employers tend to judge you before they meet you. It's kind of their job.

Even though Microsoft used comic books as an example, finding another comic book geek isn't going to be the use of this method... it's going to be used to find someone with a compatible sexual fetish. That information definitely does not need to be available to employers, coworkers, family, etc unless you choose to make it so.

Comment: Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 249

by shawb (#35442232) Attached to: Text Messages To Replace Stamps In Sweden
You really think someone is going to spend the effort and legal liability of cracking a government code just to save $4 on 10 letters? Especially once people start getting denied because the same person sent out 10 letters over and over. Besides... easy fix. Put the address you are sending to in the message, keep that in a database and compare once the letter actually comes in.

Comment: Re:Does not Affect Prior Art Doctrine (Score 1) 362

by shawb (#35434996) Attached to: Senate Passes Landmark Patent Reform Bill
Which, in theory, should be somewhat alleviated by the patent office now holding on to the license fees rather than passing them on to patch the general budget. Well, unless corruption is actually one of the largest driving factors. Which, having worked in a beaurocracy, I highly doubt.

Comment: Re:Get a USB hub (Score 1) 297

by shawb (#35354742) Attached to: Can the Atrix 4G Really Become Your Next PC?

Real work will still probably be done on a traditional desktop or laptop for some time now, but that's a different story. Anyways, the future probably isn't so much with a dock that allows for bigger and better I/O as it is a way to connect the smartphone to the PC so the actual run state of a program can be shifted from one device to another similar to dragging a window between screens of a multi monitor setup. This would take a revolution in the way DRM is handled, probably something along the lines of cloud computing with the PC and phone acting as thin clients. Unless the economy crashes and noone can afford it.

Comment: Re:Can it run my Steam games? (Score 1) 297

by shawb (#35354580) Attached to: Can the Atrix 4G Really Become Your Next PC?
The last games I have heard people in the real world talking about are Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies and the Android port of Vendetta. While PC gaming isn't going to absolutely go away anytime soon, I don't foresee it being a growth market. We are probably at the point where new PC gaming studios will open only as fast as old ones close or are absorbed into behemoths like EA. New creative indie gamers are mostly going to be doing their first games for cell phones as a pervasive distribution system with modest pricing schemes is now integral to the experience.

To anyone who disagrees: what is the last new genre of video game that is largely installed (by installed I mean not played in the browser) on PCs? PC gaming is pretty much dominated by FPS, roleplaying, life sim and RTS/TBS. All genres that were pretty well codified in the '90s, with changes since then largely being evolutionary rather than revolutionary, or of the "but on the INTERNET!" variety.

To put it in numbers, Angry Birds has 50 million shipped, which is more than three times as many as the biggest selling PC game The Sims at 16 Million. Wii has 7 games that sold better than The Sims. The DS has 5 games that sold better than The Sims.

So no, PC gaming probably isn't going to go away for a bit. On the other hand, it really isn't going anywhere at all.

Comment: Re:Panspermia (Score 2) 199

by shawb (#35344246) Attached to: Meteorites Brought Ingredients of Life To Earth
This is far from panspermia. That is the theory that life itself came from space. This is just saying that Nitrogen is brought to the earth by meteorites.

Really, this should just be one big "duh" to anyone who has read up on theory of planetary formation. Basically, the whole planet is made up of meteorites that crashed together. And maybe a couple times it was large aggregations of meteorites that collided into the growing mass, and even small planetoid bodies such as the event that is theorized to have created the moon. But those planetoid bodies were made by the collisions of numerous meteors, dust particles, etc.

Measure twice, cut once.