bagel

Regarding your individual points:
1: I’m totally fine with this. This is how they did it in Diablo 2 as I recall, and it worked out great for me. Never missed Battle.net, had a blast playing with friends.

2: I think they could have made it less intrusive without sacrificing the architecture-as-DRM style. There’s no real need for my computer to call back to the server for every little action I perform. I suspect that they did it this way to counter hacking, as you suggested, especially in light of the RMAH. People get really touchy about real money. Splitting characters between Battle.net and single player/private multiplayer as discussed previously would address this issue, but would require two different back-end architectures for the game, which I certainly wouldn’t be enthusiastic about writing if I was a Blizzard dev.

Benefits: Steam has cloud sync that makes me never have to worry about losing my progress and doesn’t slow my single player experience down if I have a poor connection. I don’t particularly care about the economy or community as I have no interest in or intention to use either of those items.

What it sounds like it boils down to is that I wish the game had a “curmudgeon mode” so I don’t have to deal with these new-fangled internets.

Nothing substantive to add, I just want to say that I love the video reviews. I’m always sad when they’re not included, because reading is for suckers.

I would have dinged it a point for the architecture that requires it to do some phoning back to Blizzard servers even in single player mode. I don’t begrudge them their DRM, but when it’s even possible for a single player game to lag because of your internet connection, you really need to step back, take a break, and re-evaluate the way you’re structuring things. I shouldn’t have to worry about my internet connection speed while playing by myself.

They’re hiring another COO? Don’t they already have 2 or 3?

So how did that conversation go, exactly?

“These frequent major version releases are irritating.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, problem solved!”

Look! Differentiation in hardware! Zomg!

I’d love for this tech to be applied to a (good) phone in the US market.

Just because they do is no proof that they have to in order to stay afloat.

At these prices why wouldn’t I just buy a real set of speakers and a receiver? Surely it’d be no more than $800 for something that sounds much better.

So he’s basically saying that people should get their content elsewhere because Dish isn’t interested in providing it anymore. What business are they in again?

No, but all that listening for voice commands takes CPU time, which in turn takes battery power. Additionally it means Samsung has its tentacles deeper into the OS than necessary, which gives them more opportunity to introduce bugs or instabilities.

They had me with the specs and then lost me again with the stupid customizations. I will never want to control my phone with voice commands. Ever.

Interesting that you say the screen looks great. One of the things they pick on in the Verge review is the screen, primarily that it’s not bright enough, and that’s always kind of put me off of the phone. Do you agree with that assessment of the screen?

I don’t generally get LTE on my Thunderbolt as I live in a fairly rural area. If I happen to be killing time in more populated areas, sure, but that doesn’t happen often. I’ve also added the extended battery to my Thunderbolt, so I’d be surprised if it wasn’t just as thick as the Sony.

iTunes lists sizes for all apps so you can check out the total size of all the apps you’d want to have loaded.

I myself have a 16GB OG iPad and find it to not be enough space for everything I’d like to put on it. I do keep a few movies for my daughter on there though.

And by d-pads I mean analog sticks. My brain is clearly not braining today.

I confess I wish I’d gotten this instead of my Thunderbolt. The gamepad is a unique, interesting hardware differentiator, and I wish so hard that Sony (or anybody, really) would try it again, but make it also a good device this time. And please but in real d-pads (sliding is fine). These capacitive things just don’t cut it.

Go go gadget reading the entire article!

Thanks, I missed that. It seems neat but what appeals to me here is the ability to just scream a dragon shout without having to select it first, as it appears the hack does.

I would absolutely love it if I could do these voice commands on the PC version.

Writing assembly isn’t commonplace now. Yes it’s done but only by those trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance. Most things are written in C or higher, and the compiler takes care of ISA differences for you in that case.

I admit I like the design; there’s no real need for a tablet to be symmetric. I think it could have had a place in the world if they hadn’t priced it… like a Sony. I’ll never understand how these companies expect to compete at or near iPad pricing.