Wednesday, July 22, 2009

What I Do About Twitter Spammers

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Just like most other online communication media, Twitter has been invaded by spammers. Twitter spammers or spitters as they have been dubbed will follow people, clicking on their thumbnail images will bring up their pages of tweets that are full of links to web sites selling every questionable product that spammers are trying to sell.

While some may just ignore the twitter spammers, I've been blocking them from following me. That way anybody looking at my page can't click on to the spammers pages. If the spammers see the numbers of the people they follow declining them maybe they'll just pack up and leave Twitter alone.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Patent Trolling Is Alive and Well

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The latest in questionable lawsuits is another one from yet another company that is in business to sue other companies who make and sell successful products. A holding company called Tsera LLC has filed lawsuits against Apple, Microsoft and 21 other companies over touch pad controlled portable electronics. While the original application for the patent was made in 1999 it wasn't actually issued until 2003.

There were touch pads on laptop computers and other devices long before 1999 which makes this patent itself questionable. This lawsuit will be tossed out in time but not before another patent troll will line up and take a shot at Apple, Microsoft or any other successful tech company. Some kind of reform needs to happen soon.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Are The Best Days of PC Gaming In The Past?

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Any quick view of video gaming web sites and magazines are full of reviews and information that mostly deals with console systems. It was just a few years ago that games on PC's were filling the pages of magazines and web sites. Prior to the current generation of video game consoles PC gamers often gloated about how superior their PC's were. At that time there were advantages to PC's as a gaming machine. When the last generation of consoles were introduced about a decade ago, PC's had faster processors, better graphics, better sound and the ability to play online. When the Nintendo Game Cube and the Playstation 2 hit the market hardware to make the consoles able to play online was optional and very few games supported online gaming.

That all changed with the current generation of systems. Online gaming in built into the consoles and games. The graphics support high definition with more colours than ever. Console games come with surround sound as the standard. Online gaming is built into systems and games with many new games and old favorites available for download. One thing that always put console games at an advantage over PC games is ease of use. Just pop in a disc into the machine and play. Since the hardware is the same for each system there was very little worry about incompatibility. No need to update a driver just to run a game. That same ease of use and hardware uniformitity still make consoles attractive to many gamers.

In the past couple of years the tide has been shifting among game developers now most development is for consoles and PC's are an afterthought. Game developers have to put out games for the machines people play on and more most it's the consoles. More and more gamers are more confortable on the couch than they are sitting in front of the computer. Game developers are going to where the money is, and there is less money from PC gamers which means fewer games on PC's and more games on consoles.