SEALs are supposed to be secretive, stealthy killers. The public will probably never know the identities of the SEAL Team Six members who killed Osama bin Laden. But the Navy and the Pentagon had no problem letting the producers of a forthcoming action movie put active-duty SEALs on camera. Their faces are on screen and their names — first names, at least — are in the credits, along with their rank.“There were many precautions taken with the project to make sure our advantages on the battlefield would not be compromised to the enemy,” explains Amanda Greenberg, a Navy spokeswoman. Well, that and the fact that Act of Valor — in theaters next Friday! — is one giant, explicit recruiting pitch.
Not expecting great acting or dialog but am expecting things to blow up real good!
GameTree Mac, the download service associated with Cider developer TransGaming, indicates that it’s now accepting pre-orders for The Darkness II for Mac. The Darkness II is a new game from 2K Games, a first person shooter just released this month for Windows and consoles. The Mac version is expected in March.
The Darkness II follows the story of Jackie Estacado, a crime boss who’s risen to power after wielding a supernatural force that enables him to command evil, demonic minions and powers. The action game is the sequel to a hit released in 2007, based on a series of graphic novels.
The game costs $49.99 to pre-order; customers who pre-order will be required to download the Mac version using Valve Software’s Steam download service. Check the Gametree Mac site for more details like system requirements.
A free new tool released on Thursday was built specifically to address many of the concerns raised in that study and to go well beyond what standard private browsing modes can do. It’s called Do Not Track Plus, and it works seamlessly with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari; not only that, but it can increase page load speeds by up to four times, its maker says.Users can decide at the individual website level whether they want to block or allow tracking. When they do want their activities to remain private, DNT+ blocks a growing list of 580 different tracking technologies and more than 200 tracking companies.
I’ve been using it for a while and it’s a bit scary to see how often and in how many different ways we are being tracked.
Lucasfilm has done a smashing job on Star Wars — it’s easily one of the best post-3D conversions I’ve seen. The key to this is that most of the 3D effects are relatively subtle. In other 3D post-conversions, the makers are so keen to make it clear it’s in 3D they make the effect too stark.So is it worth paying to see?
At this point, is there any point in even discussing it? If you’re a fan, you will, if you’re not, you won’t. What’s interesting is kids today won’t get to see the series the way we did (out of order) so it will be an entirely different experience and story for them.
There’s nothing more romantic than a private dinner for two when you want to spend some time with your significant other this coming Valentine’s Day. And you don’t need to make reservations weeks in advance or pay a pretty sum for dinner out.The following slideshow features quick, simple and easy recipes that are designed to serve just two people. Look for the classic filet mignon with compound butter, roasted mustard salmon, roast duck breasts with pomegranate, and more. Any of these recipes will impress your loved one and show them how much you care. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Some of these recipes look so easy to make, even someone who burns water could create a lovely meal.
Analysts said the strategy of going head to head with arguably the most successful retail chain of the 21st century could be a smart move, although it is unlikely that Microsoft Stores will be money engines in the way Apple Stores have been.Microsoft has had nearly a decade to study Apple Stores and, despite the obvious similarities, has added a few new wrinkles. The new Palo Alto store will be bigger than Apple’s. It will have a dedicated space for local community organizations and schools. And it, like newer Microsoft Stores, will have a section devoted to small businesses.
How is “bigger” a wrinkle? And remember, Apple Stores started off with dedicated spaces – but found they didn’t need them to draw in crowds.
With positive ratings for Congress at an all-time low, it may come as no surprise that a plurality of voters nationwide believes a group of people randomly selected from a telephone book would do a better job than the current legislators.The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that 43% believe a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree with that assessment, while another 19% are not sure.
Ben Brooks talking about the Path/Address Book kerfuffle:
If you live and play in the Apple world, you need only trust Apple. This is what Apple tells us — it’s a ‘feature’ of the Apple ecosystem.The fact is, that in this instance, Apple broke that trust.
I read that a couple of times and thought about what my reaction was to this whole mess. I don’t think Apple broke my trust though. If Apple told me my Address Book data was safe and this happened, then yeah, they would have broken my trust.
However, my reaction to this was that there’s obviously something that needs to be fixed.
Home-brewed coffee lovers who are used to descaling nespresso vertuoline themselves, take note: More than a million popular coffee makers are being recalled after dozens of reports of the brewers spraying hot liquid, coffee grounds or tea leaves onto people.
Another nail in the coffin for Tassimo one-cup coffee makers, which have been overshadowed by Keurig devices’ growing popularity.
Tesla Motors Inc. on Thursday showed off a prototype of its Model X, a battery-powered SUV that represents the company’s bet that consumers will buy a range of electric vehicles spun from a common platform.The Model X, which features what the company calls “falcon-wing” doors and faster acceleration than a Porsche 911 – it goes from 0 to 100 km/h per hour in 4.4 seconds – will start production late 2013 and begin delivery in 2014.
It won’t be cheap, but it sure is cool-looking, for an SUV.
Tommy Jordan was not pleased with the foul-mouthed rant his 15 year old daughter Hannah posted to her Facebook page, so he retaliated with his own YouTube video. I suspect many parents of teenagers (myself included) can relate to Jordan’s reaction.
Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court announced that a Motorola Mobility lawsuit over a patent declared essential to the 3G/UMTS wireless telecommunications standard has been dismissed.
Motorola has won previous injunctions against Apple for patents pertaining to GPRS and e-mail communications, but this was one that FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller thought was bound to fail once it got in front of a judge.
The crowd-source funding site Kickstarter has been doing remarkably well recently, giving thousands of entrepreneurs the opportunity to bring their projects to life. It also just hit a major milestone: the service has now funded two million-dollar projects, both on the same day. First up was the Elevation Dock for the iPhone, which takes design cues from Apple’s own aluminum unibody products. It hit $1 million in donations sometime around 1:30PM Eastern today. Following it was Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure, which hit its initial goal of $400,000 in approximately eight hours, and crossed the million-dollar mark just a short time ago.
The Elevation Dock is pretty cool, but Double Fine Adventure is particularly remarkable because it hit its funding goal in such a short period of time. It’s taken a lot of people in the game business by surprise – especially Tim Schafer and Double Fine.
Speaking of Double Fine, the company’s classic console platform action game Psychonauts has been ported to the Mac and is available from the Mac App Store for the relatively budget price of $9.99. If you’re looking for something fun to do on your Mac this weekend and you’ve never played it, it’s worth the money.
A report from the Beijing Evening News suggests Chinese parents are scuffling with their kids over iPads. It seems the iPad was the gift of choice for many children this past Chinese New Year, and now those youngsters are having a hard time putting their tablets aside.Exasperated parents don’t know what to do when their tots refuse to hand over the iPad, and they’re afraid iPad use may impede their children’s education.
Interesting problem. They could use the solution my mom used in these situations. She said, “No.”
In 1977, when Jerry Manock was 33 and Apple had just five employees, Steve Jobs hired him as a consultant to design the Apple II, one of the first personal computers in history to be successfully mass produced and marketed. Manock gets credit for almost everything but the circuit board and the logic Board: the machine’s “thermal management, the structure, the outside aesthetics, the color — beige, Pantone 453, the color of the deep-space universe,” Manock says, rattling off his contributions to the once-cutting-edge Apple II, which now looks like a yellowing typewriter on a shelf in his office.Beside it sits the smaller, self-contained, revolutionary Macintosh. Manock was part of the original team of a half-dozen workers who designed the Mac.
An interesting interview with one of the original Apple II and Macintosh designers.
Canadians might love the Super Bowl, but we hate the commercials.Not the commercials you get to watch. I’m talking about the ones we get stuck with in Canada.What does that mean? When America got an overproduced Bud Light Platinum ad, British Columbia got a lightly droll spot for a domestic IPA, Alexander Keith’s. Around the time America was watching John Stamos peddle Greek yogurt, British Columbia was learning about job creation and infrastructure. Shortly after America watched a joyful promo for NBC shows such as Community, British Columbia watched a local advertisement for — I kid you not — an actual community college.
Americans have no idea how annoying this is. Canadians see and hear all the hype about the Super Bowl commercials and, come game time, we get ads for Speedy Muffler King.
Today’s Tweetbot releases are just another example of a subset of users that think developers should keep on updating their apps, even adding completely new iPad versions, for free, forever. This kind of controversy seems to take place every time a major iPhone app is released as standalone on the iPad, or vice versa. So I’d like to formulate a quick thought on the subject.
As I said on Twitter when the tempest in a teapot over the $3 cost of TweetBot for the iPad started – it’s three dollars…you have an iPad. See the disconnect?
Apple’s retail stores increased sales by nearly 60% in Q4. This is a dramatic though not unprecedented change from Q3′s 1% growth rate. The growth rate faithfully tracks iPhone releases as demonstrated in a post last quarter.
Engineers performed extensive renovations on the legendary Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, sharply reducing its tilt. The repairs ended its status as leaning-est tower, moving it to somewhere in the middle of the pack and touching off a competition, which still simmers, for the crown.The matter seemed to have been settled a few years ago, when Guinness World Records in London awarded the title of “Farthest Leaning Tower” to one that accompanies a solid red brick church in the village of Suurhusen, in northern Germany. It leans at an angle of 5.19 degrees, compared with the Pisa tower’s 3.9 degrees.
Who knew there was so much competition for the tile of “building most likely to fall over soon”.
EA has just announced Mass Effect Infiltrator for iOS, a companion app that will help boost your “Galactic Readiness” in Mass Effect 3. Increased readiness will help enable players get the best ending possible in the trilogy’s finale.
It’s coming “soon.” Hopefully it’ll be better than Mass Effect Galaxy, a forgettable Mass Effect game that came out in 2009.
Eastman Kodak Co., struggling to reinvent itself in the wake of bankruptcy, announced Thursday plans to “phase out dedicated capture devices” as part of a refocus of its consumer business. That means that Kodak will no longer sell its own lines of digital cameras, pocket video cameras or digital picture frames.
Instead, Kodak plans to expand its brand licensing program to include companies in these markets. So it’s possible you’ll continue to see Kodak-branded digital cameras, just not ones actually made by Kodak.
On the consumer end, Kodak plans to continue to create and sell retail photo kiosks and digital dry lab systems (like the ones you see in pharmacies and other retail locations), inkjet printers, Kodak apps for Facebook, “Kodak Gallery” digital photo products, camera accessories and batteries and “traditional” film capture products and photographic paper.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is dumping RIM’s BlackBerry from its list of officially supported mobile devices, according to a memo sent from the organizations CIO.
According to the memo sent by Joseph F. Klimavicz, NOAA Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications, support for the BlackBerry will continue until May 12, 2012.
The U.S. government will instead supply workers with new iPhones and iPads. Klimavicz says the organization will now support the iPhone 4 and above with iOS 5 and above. The iPad 2 and above with iOS 5 and above will also be supported.
The memo, dated February 3, 2012, didn’t say when the government would furnish workers with the new Apple products.
The user names and passwords clipped from Foxconn on Wednesday can be used to place fraudulent orders from the company’s clients, the hackers said in a statement accompanying a torrent file containing the stolen data. Foxconn has taken its services site offline.
The group, Swaggsec, said that they didn’t do this as a result of working conditions at Foxconn factories (contrary to earlier reports). Instead, it looks like they did it just because they could.
Sources say the company has chosen the first week in March to debut the successor to the iPad 2, and will do so at one of its trademark special events. The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.
Maybe I’m being old-fashioned here, but this seems unequivocally wrong. Any app, from Angry Birds to Fart App 3000, can just grab the information in your address book without asking? Hell. No.
