Buying an Apple computer? Get ready to throw away your monitor, over and over again. New Apple hardware is shipping with "HDCP" anti-copying technology that prevents showing some video on "non-compliant" monitors. Best part: the list of "compliant" monitors will change over time: the monitor you buy today can be "revoked" tomorrow and stop working. Slashdot says that Apple's added "copyright protection" to its video. But copyright law isn't violated when you watch a movie on an "unapproved" monitor. This isn't about enforcing copyright law, it's about giving a small handful of movie companies a veto over hardware designs. Yesterday, our buddy David Chartier at Ars and Sam Oliver at AppleInsider both publicized an issue that's been burning up the support boards for a while now: iTunes video rentals and purchases in HD are flagged for HDCP control, and in cooperation with the new Mini DisplayPort connector on the MacBook and MacBook Pro unibody models, those movies and TV shows are refusing to play back on non-compliant external displays. In this case, 'compliant' means HDMI or recent-vintage DVI, but even monitors or TVs that support HDCP may not properly negotiate with the DisplayPort connector to give iTunes and QuickTime the all-clear signal (if so, quitting and relaunching iTunes once the display is hooked up may clear the playback hold). Equally annoying: HDCP is only supposed to apply to 'high-value' digital streams, meaning standard-def purchases and rentals on the iTunes store should be out of scope... but some reports indicate that both the HD and SD instances are flagged, blocking playback on anything but the laptop's internal display or a straight-thru HDMI connection. Argh! MacBook Pro users getting bitten by HDCP (Thanks, Denver Jewelry Guy!)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b8768ef2756cab7b2fd53f2cc418dbe3p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b8768ef2756cab7b2fd53f2cc418dbe3p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b8768ef2756cab7b2fd53f2cc418dbe3" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

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Envoyé : 20 novembre 2008
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Half-Life 10th Anniversary

Hard to believe, but the game that glorified the crowbar is 10 years old this week.

Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life, Valve's debut game and easily one of the greatest shooters ever made. While it's easy to look back and think that Half-Life's success was all but assured, it wasn't such a sure bet back then. Many don't remember that while the game debuted to critical acclaim, it took a while for it to become a commercial success.

You've probably played Half-Life or its blockbuster sequel, 2004's Half-Life 2, or the Half-Life 2 episodes contained in last year's The Orange Box. This is a tale of a science experiment gone horribly awry, an alien invasion, and the crowbar-wielding protagonist named Gordon Freeman. With its incredible attention to detail, story, craftsmanship, atmosphere, and scripted events, Half-Life helped to define first-person shooters as we know them today.

We had a chance to talk to Valve's Mark Laidlaw last week about the anniversary. Laidlaw is a science fiction and horror writer who joined Valve during Half-Life's development and hasn't left since. He worked on the story and level design of Half-Life, as well as Half-Life 2.

Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington in Kirkland, Washington. Both were veterans of the Windows team at nearby Microsoft. Laidlaw joined the company in 1997. "Half-Life existed when I got here. They had just named it. Actually, between the first time that I came up to Valve and the next time they had come up with a name for it. They were still calling it Quiver the first time I had saw it," he said.

The origins of Half-Life came from a "typical sort of Valve thing" according to Laidlaw. There was a series of meetings where a lot of ideas and features were tossed around. "A lot of level designers had been playing around with the engine already and the editing tools. They had a list of things they wanted, like fog and the ever-popular procedural moss. And then the idea to do something like The Mist, the Stephen King story, at least to the extent that there's some military facility experimenting with things it shouldn't be and then things go out of control. And early on there was the idea that the whole thing started after some disaster had happened and there was a gate opened to another dimension, and then about two-thirds of the way through you'd go through that gate into this other dimension," Laidlaw said.

"That was pretty much things looked like when I saw it; a handful of level designers building rooms with a crazy science-experiment theme, and all these different ways you could the player using bizarre experiments. There were scientists and security guards; a lot of basic elements were in place. But what I heard from Gabe [Newell, co-founder of Valve] that was most exciting to me was the idea of doing this cinematic narrative kind of thing, which was the thing I had been hoping that someone would do."

The opening of Half-Life remains one of the most memorable in gaming to this day. Rather than begin with roaring fanfare or a raging battle, the game begins with a quiet ride in a tramcar through the vast Black Mesa research facility. Despite having minimal dialogue, that opening sequence alone told an incredible story.

"The Half-Life genesis had already happened when I got here, and I was one of those people who was responding to everything that name and that basic story evoked. The first time I heard it I got excited; with the little bit I had seen of it, it just felt right. And I think that everybody partly responded to that; there was this little flicker there of something that everybody responded to, and then we all just kind of kept feeding things into that flame and keep it burning. The amazing thing in that process was our ability to express that vision was so vague, but we were kind of all seeing the same thing."

"We converged on it until the test chamber scene came to life. And that was the point where we built the rest of the game; we kind of organized all these things, these experiments and these puzzles and things we were building, around that experience. This is what we want the whole game to be like. Nobody had ever seen anything like this in a game. This was the thing we wanted to do, that we'd been pushing out all along… but it was about making that happen in a level and having it being an experience for a player. And it was surprising for us. Everybody came in one morning and played that level who hadn't actually built it, which was John Guthrie and Kelly Bailey sitting together over the weekend finally putting the audio in, hooking up all the entities. So for everybody except them it was total surprise, and it was this shock and recognition. This was the vision that we'd had that nobody had quite been able to put into words but we had been trying to realize."

Many don't remember, but Half-Life was one of several anticipated shooters that the gaming audience was looking forward to. The others included SiN from Activision and Quake II from id Software. And in the case of SiN, there was plenty of respect. "I remember the sight of SiN just panicked us," Laidlaw said. "[We were] comparing features and looking at screenshots, and it was fuel for some of the level designers who had been asking for certain features to go and bug people for them. Like, 'Look what SiN has! Look what SiN has!'"

Half-Life went through a number of delays before it finally shipped on November 19, 1998. (To mark the game's 10th anniversary, Valve is selling Half-Life for 98-cents on Steam, its digital distribution system, on Wednesday.) But keep in mind that shipping a game in 1998 was a far cry from shipping a game in 2008. "It was very different because there was no instant release, there was no Steam, there was no instantaneous response from the world. Now when something goes out we can literally jump on a forum and watch people reacting to it and discover problems that we can correct immediately."

"When Half-Life was done, it went out of our hands and we stared in shock because very few of us had actually shipped anything of the sort. And then we went off to Mexico, and I think it actually hit the store shelves while we were having our celebratory trip to Cabo. The Leonid Meteor Shower was supposed to be a big one that year, that there was a sort of minor Y2K-meltdown fear that communication satellites would get knocked out, you're not going to be able to access ATMs. So we went to Mexico [and] as far as we knew we were going to be totally shut off from contact with civilization and we didn't know what was going to happen when we went down there. It added to this sort of apocalyptic feel to the whole trip," he recalled.

"I think at the time it came out we didn't know that it was going to have any kind of success outside of the fairly small seeming market for first-person shooters, and we were looking at SiN and Quake and these things that were going on around us and I don't think that I knew that there was going to be a wide interest in the game industry beyond that. But the responses that we got from people who played the OEM and Day One stuff were super encouraging. But it was also really slow building things. Even though it took a while getting onto the shelves--it was there for Thanksgiving and it started to sell--and we get a little bit excited when we start to hear about things like this billboard coming out and a little bit of marketing that was happening and articles in interesting places, but it built really slowly."

"Gabe had originally sort of dangled this thing that if Half-Life had ever hit number one on the top-selling games list then we'd get a trip to Hawaii or something like that. It was not until about a year after the game came out that it hit that spot, which was pretty unusual, but it just kind of indicates how initially it was just kind of slow, and we weren't really sure. There was that percolation of awards coming out, but we weren't necessarily sure beyond that how well it was going to do, and what does this mean to the company? And early on Gabe had said stuff like, 'A couple of years after this game comes out we're either going to be gods or we won't exist. There won't be nothing left, just a smoking crater.'"

:heart: :D

We first wrote about Meraki and their solar-powered Wi-Fi repeater back in mid '07, but they're finally getting ready to ship these next month. According to Cleantechnica, it's going to be $749 if...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/free-solar-wifi.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="468" height="374" style="display:block;" /We first wrote about a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/free-wi_fi/merakis-solar+powered-repeater-lets-you-create-your-own-neighborhood-network-265814.php"Meraki/a and their solar-powered Wi-Fi repeater back in mid '07, but they're finally getting ready to ship these next month. According to a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2008/11/19/free-solar-powered-wifi-coming-to-a-town-near-you/"Cleantechnica/a, it's going to be $749 if you have your own solar panel, which then balloons up to $1499 for "larger units". The main idea that Meraki is going after is "getting internet access to everyone", so powering these units off of el sol is a good idea./p pCity planners can deploy these in parks, or really rich people can deploy these all over their multi-acre ranches so they can torrent anywhere. If Michael Jackson a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7728871.stm"still had Neverland/a, he'd be all up in this solar action. [a href="http://meraki.com/products_services/hardware/"Meraki/a via a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2008/11/19/free-solar-powered-wifi-coming-to-a-town-near-you/"Cleantechnica/a via a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/free-solar-power-wifi.php"Treehugger/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=35944d2d2786957e82b4db8f7f70bd66" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=35944d2d2786957e82b4db8f7f70bd66" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=lFhxvFkL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=euEnUMHh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=UK7p7gE5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=UK7p7gE5" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=TqtwAYoe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=TqtwAYoe" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/jr5Wo66pVXg" height="1" width="1"/

Ok, so here it is.
Im getting a MacBook.
Couldnt go to the store after school.
So I ordered one online.
How long does it take to ship?
It says 1 - 3 days but would it really take 3 days?
and then does it deliver like 1 day after the shipping?

I also would like to know if the Incase black case is good for it?
My friend has it and she loves it but idk doesn't seem so sturdy in my backpack with that.

Thanks, Luc

img src="http://cdn.thesuperficial.com//bfm_gallery/2008/11/1119 Paris Benji breakup/post_image/post_image-1119_paris_hilton_benji_00.jpg" border="0"br Paris Hilton and Benji Madden officially threw in the towel yesterday, according to her rep. While Paris was recently a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/11/paris_hilton_stavros_niarchos.php"spotted with her ex Stavros Niarchos/a over the weekend, friends say that had nothing to do with the breakup. Which I entirely believe based solely on the fact that Benji Madden looks like Uncle Fester: Hot Topic Edition. a href="http://www.usmagazine.com/news/parils-hilton-and-benji-madden-split"Us Magazine/a reports: blockquote"Even though they are still in love, they felt it would be better to just be friends," a source close to Hilton, 27, tells Us.br "Benji was overprotective and controlling. He doesn't get along with any of her friends," the source tells Us. "Friends thought Paris had changed since being with Benji and she wants to be herself again."br The couple stayed faithful to each other, stresses the source. Hilton was spotted with her ex, shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, in Miami over the weekend, while Madden, 29, hung in NYC with his bro, Joel (beau of Hilton's best friend, Nicole Richie).br "Nothing went on between Paris and Stav in Miami," the source tells Us. "She was there for a girls weekend with her BFFs."/blockquote Benji Madden must really be kicking himself now for breaking up with a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/07/sophie_monk_in_a_bikini.php"Sophie Monk/a. And by kicking himself I of course mean staring down his pants and crying "Please grow back, penis. I'll be good! Honest." div style="width: 425px; margin: 0 0 0 30px; padding: 0;"ul style="list-style-type: none; display: block; width: 425px; margin: 0; padding: 0;"li style="display: block; float: left; width: 90px; height: 134px; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/11/paris_hilton_benji_madden_brea.php" style="display: block; width: 90px; height: 134px; background: #CCC; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; padding: 0;"img src="http://cdn.thesuperficial.com//bfm_gallery/2008/11/1119 Paris Benji breakup/gallery_thumb/gallery_thumb-1119_paris_hilton_benji_00.jpg" style="display: block; border: 1px solid #cccccc; width: 88px; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/a/lili style="display: block; float: left; width: 90px; height: 134px; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/11/paris_hilton_benji_madden_brea.php?bfm_index=1" style="display: block; width: 90px; height: 134px; background: #CCC; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; padding: 0;"img src="http://cdn.thesuperficial.com//bfm_gallery/2008/11/1119 Paris Benji breakup/gallery_thumb/gallery_thumb-1119_paris_hilton_benji_01.jpg" style="display: block; border: 1px solid #cccccc; width: 88px; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/a/lili style="display: block; float: left; width: 90px; height: 134px; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/11/paris_hilton_benji_madden_brea.php?bfm_index=2" style="display: block; width: 90px; height: 134px; background: #CCC; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; padding: 0;"img src="http://cdn.thesuperficial.com//bfm_gallery/2008/11/1119 Paris Benji breakup/gallery_thumb/gallery_thumb-1119_paris_hilton_benji_02.jpg" style="display: block; border: 1px solid #cccccc; width: 88px; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/a/lili style="display: block; float: left; width: 90px; height: 134px; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2008/11/paris_hilton_benji_madden_brea.php?bfm_index=3" style="display: block; width: 90px; height: 134px; background: #CCC; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; padding: 0;"img src="http://cdn.thesuperficial.com//bfm_gallery/2008/11/1119 Paris Benji breakup/gallery_thumb/gallery_thumb-1119_paris_hilton_benji_03.jpg" style="display: block; border: 1px solid #cccccc; width: 88px; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/a/li/uldiv style="clear: left;"/div/div div class = "credit"Photos: WENN/div pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DNtDq0ghhB4Yxt5pJzOtBoardz4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DNtDq0ghhB4Yxt5pJzOtBoardz4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thesuperficial/SNxk/~4/PdRVgpxVCKE" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/okoro_oms-lx100_graphic-150x150.jpg" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="2" title="Okoro OMS-LX100 Graphic" alt="" / It looks like Okoro Media Systems heard consumers call for a more attractively priced HTPC. The company today announced availability of the OMS-LX100 low profile Windows Vista Media Center PC with a single CableCARD tuner for only $1,725 (add $300 for the dual tuner setup). At that price point the system packs nice goodies: 2.2GHz [...]pVisit a href="http://www.ehomeupgrade.com"eHomeUpgrade/a for more breaking news./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ehomeupgrade/entries/~4/458981197" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/67443?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Indian+frigate+destroys+%27mothership%27+as+raids+off+Somalia+continuech=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Piracy+at+sea+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Xan+Ricec7=2008_11_20c8=1120852c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Piracy+at+seac13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FPiracy+at+sea" width="1" height="1" //divpSomali bandits terrorising the busy shipping routes around the Horn of Africa suffered a rare setback when an Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mothership" after coming under fire in the Gulf of Aden./ppThe Indian Navy said that its frigate, one of the numerous international warships dispatched to patrol the waters around the Horn of Africa, had approached a suspicious vessel on Tuesday evening. It turned out to be a previously captured ship being used by pirates as a base to launch their speedboats far out to sea./pp"The INS Tabar closed in on the mother vessel and asked her to stop for investigation," an Indian navy spokesman said. "But on repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship if it approached."/ppAfter a heavy exchange of fire, the pirate ship was destroyed. Two speedboats escaped. /ppThe naval battle came on a day when pirates seized three other ships: a Greek bulk carrier, a Thai fishing boat and an Iranian-chartered cargo ship carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat from Germany. The hijackings, which followed the capture at the weekend of the Sirius Star, the Saudi supertanker carrying $100m (pound;66m) worth of oil bound for the US, sent a powerful message of the pirates' potency./ppThe 330-metre oil tanker, the largest ship ever to be captured at sea, is reported to be anchored near the town of Harardheere on Somalia's eastern seaboard. Its owner, Vela International, a subsidiary of the state oil company Saudi Aramco, yesterday opened negotiations for a ransom payment, according to Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. /pp"I know the owners of the tanker are negotiating on the issue. We do not like to negotiate with terrorists or hijackers. But the owners of the tanker, they are the final arbiters of what happens there," he said./ppstrongDemands/strong/ppThe ransom sought will almost certainly run into tens of millions of dollars. The pirates in September captured the Ukrainian ship MV Faina, carrying 33 T-72 tanks, and initially wanted $20m, although they later reduced their demand. /ppThe Faina and its crew are still being held hostage near the north-eastern Somali fishing town of Eyl, together with more than a dozen other vessels with about 220 foreign seamen on board./ppAl-Jazeera yesterday broadcast an audio tape featuring what it said was the voice of Farah Abd Jameh, a pirate on the Sirius Star, making his demands./pp"Negotiators are located on board the ship and on land," he said. "Once they have agreed on the ransom it will be taken in cash to the oil tanker. We assure the safety of the ship that carries the ransom. We will mechanically count the money and we have machines that can detect fake money." No ransom amount was mentioned, however, and the authenticity of the tape could not be confirmed./ppstrongLaw and order/strong/ppWhile the capture of so many passing cargo vessels makes a mockery of pirates' claims to be protecting the country from foreign exploitation, complaints about illegal fishing in Somali waters are genuine. The Seafarers' Assistance Programme in Mombasa says that at any one time there can be hundreds of foreign trawlers, mostly from Europe and the Middle East, fishing within Somalia's 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. /ppLocal fishermen say their catches are declining as a result. And while some foreign ships do acquire permits, corrupt officials often pocket the money./ppAnalysts say that in the long term the key to ending piracy is establishing an effective authority on land in Somalia. In 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union controlled most of southern and central Somalia for six months, bringing in law and order for the first time since the early 1990s, piracy all but disappeared./ppBut after the Islamists were ousted by invading Ethiopian forces, pirates began to flourish once more. The Transitional Federal Government, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, exercises no authority on the ground or at sea and claims, with some justification, that it can do little to rein in the pirates. /ppIn an interview with the shipping weekly Fairplay, Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East, explained the difficulties of patrolling Africa's longest coastline. "The pirates will go somewhere we are not. If we patrol the Gulf of Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden."/ppSomalia's prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, said patrols would not stop piracy and said instead that his country needed help in tackling the criminal networks that run within and without Somalia./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/piracy"Piracy at sea/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227142268632112000542038307"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227142268632112000542038307" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/kanguru_e-flash.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="400" height="141" style="display:block;" /In recent years, that vast majority of thumbdrive "innovations" have been...well...a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/food+shaped-usb-flash-drives-253752.php"non-technical/a. However, Kanguru has actually done something useful by integrating an eSATA plug with a standard USB 2.0 drive. For folks with eSATA capability, that means performance speeds that are several times faster than USB. The drive even comes packaged with an eSATA + Power bracket and an eSATA + Power cable for easy hookup. The drives are shipping now in 16GB ($85) and 32GB ($120) varieties with a 64GB version slated for January of 2009. [a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Kanguru-Solutions-Releases-First-Of/story.aspx?guid={D2F2C370-9810-4DC6-98B1-9F10B36772FF}"Marketwatch/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=0761379446497e2ddf433133d7dc6ede" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=0761379446497e2ddf433133d7dc6ede" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=a01u6ASL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=opDU59pc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=lVdVVWi8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=lVdVVWi8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=t2VmWUdf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=t2VmWUdf" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/1J5hnml8fl0" height="1" width="1"/

Fisher-Price Elmo Live.br / br / Selling this item for $100. Item is brand new (English version) and available for pick up or shipping immediately. If you decide to get this item shipped to your home additional shipping charges will apply. Form of payment would be cash or credit card (through PayPal only). If paying through PayPal it would be $105 to cover the credit card fees. Fisher Price has announced on their website that Elmo Live is backordered until December 9th and there is no guarantee that they will have this item in time for Christmas. This item is not available in Quebec due to the French laws. Act quickly to avoid any disappointment on Christmas morning. Message me to purchase or if you have any questions. I have a few if you need more than one.br / br / In this truly life-like creation, for the first time ever, Elmo seems to actually be speaking as his mouth opens and closes just like the real muppet, Elmo, from Sesame Street. His mannerisms are right on target as his head moves back and forth as he speaks. He waves his arms, sits and stands, even crosses his legs all the while telling stories and jokes, singing songs and playing games. Children can activate the magic with a tickle or a squeeze of ElmoÂ’s foot, tummy, back or nose. Approx. 12H. Requires 6 AA batteries (Included).br / br / Elmo fans will delight in Elmo Live! This latest version of everyone's favorite Sesame Street character has Elmo talking, singing, telling jokes, and a lot more. With an interactive style, Elmo Live! encourages creative play, and with his wide variety of actions, he can entertain a kids through different stages of their development, from 18 months onward.br / br / Elmo Live! features the furry, bright-red exterior and the big eyes characteristic of the popular Sesame Street character. He features complex actions that give him a life-like quality: His mouth and head move while he talks, sings, and tells stories; he gestures with his arms, and he moves his legs. He even crosses his legs when he sits on the included stool.br / br / Very easy to play with -- just press his buttons to get him going. Press Elmo's foot and he will sit down on his stool to tell you a story. He even gestures to act out parts of his stories! Squeeze his nose, and he'll make a variety of silly sounds; he'll even ask you if you have his nose and ask you to give it back to him. Squeeze his hand, and he'll dance. Elmo even blows kisses, asks for hugs, and says he loves you. He tells jokes, acts ticklish, and more.br / br / When he's laid on his back, or if your child doesn't play with him for a while, Elmo will go into a battery-save mode. He'll yawn, say he's tired, and shut down. Just press one of his buttons to get him going again.br / br / Unlike some other talking toys, Elmo Live! doesn't just spout programmed phrases. Instead, he asks for interaction, and he responds as if your child is responding to him. For example, when he will ask for a hug and then say thank you as if he's received one, or he'll say he's ticklish and then will respond as if your child is tickling him. This makes an almost magical experience for your child, as if his toy is really coming to life.br /

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/dealzmodorounduphobo.jpg" width="494" height="335" style="display:block;" /These Gadget Deals of the Day round-ups remind me more and more of Tom Waits' genius Step Right Up*. Everyone's a winner, bargains galore! $500 off! $500 off this 1080p fancy 42-inch Philips LCD TV. You need videogames? We got Xbox 360 videogames for $10! And Olympus waterproof cameras at almost half the price! Shipping included! Step right up! How 'bout an engagement ring? Something for the little lady, something for the little lady, like a cartoon DeeVeeDee! Three for ifree/i. And a Texas Instruments calculator. And a xmas music collection too. Yes, tis the season to spend zero./p pbGaming:/bbr · a href="http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/879412/"Boom Blox on the Wii for $27/a (originally $39.99 - in Blockbuster stores only).br · a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16874103036"Viva Pinata on Xbox 360 for $9.99 plus free shipping/a (originally $19.99).br · a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16874105486CMP=AFC-C8Junction"Prey on Xbox 360 for $9.99 plus free shipping/a (originally $29.99)./p pbHome entertainment:/bbr · a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882103341nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL111808cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL111808-_-BluRayPlayers-_-L2B-_-82103341"Panasonic Blu-ray Player for $224.99 plus free shipping/a (originally $399.99 - use coupon code "EMCBBBJAG").br · a href="http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16889104114"Philips 42'' 1080p LCD HDTV for $899.99/a (originally $1,399.99)./p pbCameras:/bbr · a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830111243nm_mc=AFC-C8Junctioncm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-N82E16830111243-_-na-_-naAID=10446078PID=719008"Olympus Stylus 10.1 MP waterproof/shockproof digital camera for $172.49 shipped/a (originally $299.99 - use coupon code "STYLUS105025A")./p pbMemory:/bbr · a href="http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-1tb-g-force-hard-drive-dual-interface-esata-usb-2-0-7200rpm/q/loc/101/206821006.html"Fantom 1TB G-Force External Hard Drive for $99.99 plus free shipping/a (originally $149.95).br · a href="http://www.supermediastore.com/pqi-sdhc-16gb-secure-digital-high-capacity-memory-card.html"16GB SDHC Memory Card for $25.99 plus free shipping/a (originally $89.99).br · a href="http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=210243946adid=17070dcaid=17070"Kingston 8GB DataTraveler USB2.0 Flash Drive (pack of 2) for $27.49 plus free shipping/a (originally $126)./p pbHobomodo:/bbr · a href="http://www.alterigopartners.com/promotion/pop_up.html"Texas Instruments Calculator for $0/a.br · a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KKQSB4/ref=amb_link_82693171_3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DERpf_rd_s=center-3pf_rd_r=1CX15WEKGQ7QKMBJ80SCpf_rd_t=101pf_rd_p=463949711pf_rd_i=1233518011"Holiday MP3 sampler for $0/a (originally $5).br · a href="https://store.mattel.com/transition.aspx?TransitionID=141"Planet Heroes in "The Ace that Jumped Over the Moon!" DVD for $0/a (originally $9.99)./p p* Tom Waits' Step Right Up, as promised./p pobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ByomIJf5n9whl=enfs=1" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ByomIJf5n9whl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/object/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=70a2e21923cbf94e34ed94c5475c48fb" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=70a2e21923cbf94e34ed94c5475c48fb" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=CqlyLjCX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=fVUdXGvR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=TaUKawat"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=TaUKawat" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=uUvNeTOu"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=uUvNeTOu" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/H3s0mueWk3I" height="1" width="1"/

The PSP 3000/2000 hack tool from Datel we exclusively revealed yesterday is now available for pre-order at the offiical Codejunkies web-shop. They denote that the product (capable of putting the PSP 3000 and 2000 into service mode) will not be shipping until week comming 1st December and demand for the product is expected to be high, so pre-orders are encouraged. It's available to pre-order now from either us.codejunkies.com ($29.99) or uk.codejunkies.com (£19.99).

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/Packingshame.jpg" width="800" height="203" style="display:block;float:none;" /We've a href="http://gizmodo.com/5069032/apple-ships-tiny-iphone-usb-power-adapter-in-huge-anti+green-package"covered/a a href="http://gizmodo.com/382545/walmartcom-and-newegg-join-dell-in-the-irresponsible-shipping-hall-of-shame"a few/a before, but since you guys keep a href="http://gizmodo.com/5069032/apple-ships-tiny-iphone-usb-power-adapter-in-huge-anti+green-package"uncovering/a examples of companies supplying you with gizmos in ridiculously voluminous packaging, we're building a new Hall of Shame to give these things a home, and embarrass the perpetrators./p pOh, and in the spirit of Amazon's "a href="http://gizmodo.com/5074927/amazon-promises-frustration+free-packaging-dentists-scissor+makers-dismayed"frustration-free wrapping promise/a," and the vicious gash I got in my hand last week when unwrapping a simple flashdrive, let's bundle overly-protective gadget wrapping in there too. You knowmdash; those "plastic-wrapped in seven different bullet-proof layers" blister packages, in a box, in a cellophane wrapper that even a chainsaw can't free-up inside of half an hour./p pWe need your photos, chaps./p pSimply email me with the subject line "packaging hall of shame" at a href="mailto:keaton@gizmodo.com"keaton@gizmodo.com/a with your pics and a few words to describe your packaging woes./p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=8c4cf7f379b3fd3911f7559164ed3534" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8c4cf7f379b3fd3911f7559164ed3534" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=7EqCPkcj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=q51vUtcf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=gmEFpdx3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=gmEFpdx3" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=JNezqtJH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=JNezqtJH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/Kg0EI6Mu2eI" height="1" width="1"/

pThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week fined electronics recycler Jet Ocean Technology of Chino, Calif., just over $10,000 for illegally exporting cathode-ray tubes from old television sets to China. Jet Ocean is only the second electronics recycler to be penalized for shipping and deliberately mislabeling the tubes, which contain the brain-damaging metal lead. It falsely labeled the cargo as quot;mixed metal scrapquot; when it shipped it out--and as quot;scrap metalquot; when China (after being warned by Greenpeace of the true contents) refused to accept delivery and returned it. a href=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=stopping-illegal-e-waste-export-and-mishandling[More]/a

NorthNitro writes "I live in a part of the world where quality technical books are not accessible from local distributors. When I order, from international distributors, I have to keep exchange rate and shipping costs in mind; so I really need to be careful with my choices when purchasing books. I am a graduate engineer (5 years experience) that focuses on analog and digital hardware design. Next year I will be starting a complicated analog design project. This design will include circuits that integrating Pico amp currents, a lot of discrete transistor circuits and high precision op-amp circuits. I don't want a cookbook; I rather want something that can provide me with solid theoretical descriptions/models of circuits. The kind of knowledge that gives you deep understanding of analog circuits design. Can anyone suggest good books and maybe where to order them from?"pa href="http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/19/1952219amp;from=rss"img src="http://hardware.slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/11/19/1952219"/a/ppa href="http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/19/1952219amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9riITRUYfPEYUi5pVgB2Uu6S9Gk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9riITRUYfPEYUi5pVgB2Uu6S9Gk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~4/wkbBn8r-b44" height="1" width="1"/

after returning 2 unibody MBP, I ordered a penryn with a huge discount, and it arrived today.

Open the box I found that the wrapping of the power adaptor and power cord are less 'strict' than normal. the adaptor looks new, but the power cord is definitely used... I checked the machine there is no evidence that it has been used. Start machine and installed iStat Pro, it says bettery cycles is 1 (should it be zero or 1 the first time used?) There do have a typical smell of new apple laptop.

So is load cycle 1 correct for new computer? they should have charged it before shipping... but the used power cord annoyed me. Anyone experienced the same?

Otherwise I am very happy with the machine, matte screen, nicer keyboard, almost no leakage of keyboard backlit, lighter and smaller, and all the ports are there...

There is always something...:(