Looks good on paper. Someone put up a company to create this! Whoever decides to turn the Parent Porn Blocker will likely have an uphill battle though. Not only will they have to deal with the numerous workarounds sure to pop up once the product hits the market. I can imagine the makers coming under fire for turning innocent children into Oedipuses (Oedipii?).

Other than automatically replacing the heads of porn actors with the faces of the viewer’s parents, what other effective ways are there to keep children from watching porn?

Source

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We begin with the first video, where our hero Criken tests the waters. The new special infected make their debut off-screen, but you can already hear the telltale sounds they make:

The second video is more revealing, at least in terms of gameplay mechanics. Criken intentionally(?) puts himself in bad situations, and shows us how to deal with the new Charger and zombies enjoying bullet-proof protection. He even reveals his “single favorite weapon in all the Left 4 Dead games”. The video ends on a sad note, with a Smoker committing the coup de grace on the fallen group of survivors:

In the third video however, our intrepid hero finally finds the right way:

And ends the final level of the demo in a selfish manner, once again letting his teammates die before entering the safe room alone.

So what do you think? I love the melee weapons, the same but Bayou-nized music, and the new special infected. Boomer-Smoker-Jockey combos already swirl in my head.

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Oh and yes, computers were pricey toys with no obvious business application, so IBM had to advertise the System/3—which practically required it’s own room by taking up “only 68 square feet”—through a 60s paced short film.

Key benefits? System/3’s punch cards, representing data innovation: “approximately 1/3 the size of conventional cards, they store 20%… more information.” Not to mention disk-based storage.

Note how everything, from the card reader to the printer, is integrated.

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Opinions over the video online seem divided. Some wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking, while others find the tongue-in-cheek presentation funny. Supporters have accused critics of not liking the Office 2010 trailer because it’s a Microsoft project.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that’s true. A lot of people have panned the movie for failing at humor, but some critics actually go out of their way to accuse Microsoft of wasting money. So why can’t Microsoft spend its marketing budget on what seems to be an expensive short film? What, they can’t try anything new?

Another argument against the trailer ad is that reveals nothing about Office 2010. Then again, consider how well-known Microsoft Office is. I really doubt if anyone watching the video for the first time would wonder what this “Word”, “Powerpoint”, or “Outlook” is all about.

It’s the weakness of these arguments that make me think that people continue to play the Microsoft-is-still-evil/uncool game. What’s interesting is that some critics actually went out of their way to formulate “rational” explanations for their reactions, to avoid looking like they were just picking on Microsoft once again.

Then again, Microsoft could have done worse: what if their new blockbuster trailer was met with apathy, with no reaction?

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Screenshot of Dailymotion video

Some other revelations: A 5 megapixel camera, availability in black, gray and gold colors, and a nifty touch-scrolling mechanism. According to Brighthand, the E72’s workflow demo in the video reveals that the phone will run on Symbian S60, version 3.2.

Based on what I know about the E71, you can bet that the E72 should have WiFi, Bluetooth, and fast mobile broadband connectivity. Most likely HSDPA, but a step up to the faster HSUPA wouldn’t be surprising.

Legit availability and pricing info—as well as more specs—to follow once Nokia officially (or “officially”) announces the Nokia E72.

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The newest development in this field is now accepting pre-orders — the Open Graphics Project’s OGD-1, a totally open source FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) development platform.

It’s actually not a graphics card yet, but that’s one of the many possible things it could be morphed into, and that’s all part of the plan.

The OGP itself has as their stated mission the creation of a graphics card that has entirely open hardware specs, and can be run with drivers that are equally open and unencumbered by patent restrictions.

The idea came into being after the open source community experienced continued frustration with ATI and NVidia’s lack of open source driver support, although ATI’s come about as of late and started working more closely with the community.

The details of the OGD-1 make it clear that this isn’t intended to be a consumer product out of the box. Not even close: it’s a fundraiser of sorts, created to get potential designers and programmers immediately curious about the product.

With a price tag of $1,500 USD for the first iteration of the kit, few people on the consumer level are likely to drop cash for something that needs to be programmed from scratch.

The card also isn’t aimed at becoming the heart of a monster gaming machine, either. The OGP’s FAQ is very clear on this point:

A graphics card is only one possible application for this device, and not even the most potentially interesting one.

Like the OpenMoko, the idea is to make something that can be bent and shaped — not just by end users, but by other engineers and manufacturers. Someone else’s endpoint can become your starting point.

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