.::REALITYRECALL::.

The BlackBerry PlayBook hasn’t exactly captured the hearts and minds of the market since its rather lacklustre sales debut earlier this year. Even die-hard BlackBerry fans admitted that it’s not the ‘complete package’ that tablet buyers expect, given the absence of features such as native email and calendar applications, and…

A Kansas State University professor recently spoke up on the issue of violence in video games, stating that the real problem is not the violence itself, but the type of child and the parent-child relationship.

Charles Smith, professor of family studies and parenting expert said:

There is a mass hysteria about violence and video games, but it’s the context and type of video game, and more importantly, it’s the type of child.

Smith said that with a good parent-child relationship, most children can play a video game and will not become violent because of it. Some of the first video games I played were Mortal Kombat and Duke Nukem — and I didn’t turn into a gun-toting sociopath.

Violence is a part of a lot of great stories, literature and fairy tales. We don’t want to ban good literature just because there’s violence in it.

Impossible. Everyone knows video games invented violence.

Smith stated his concern regarding the push towards realism:

The realism in video games is changing constantly because of technology. This causes more realistic violence, and video games are becoming more and more immersive in terms of their nature.

I find cartoon or video game violence amusing — as long as I can remove myself from it. Those aren’t people being injured, those are pixels responding according to their programming. The first game to make me uneasy about video game violence was Soldier of Fortune and its detailed entrails — the more realistic the graphics, the more difficult it is to remember that it’s just a game.

Kudos to Smith for speaking out and placing the onus of responsibility where it should be: on the parents, not on the video game developers.

Android: Ever been hit with an unexpected data charge on your wireless bill? Avoid this in the future by using My Data Manager, a free app that will alert you when you get close to your free data threshold. More »

That unappealing smell could be the stench of jealousy, after a man uses the law to his advantage and snags a $300,000 house in Texas for a mere $16. Now his high-falutin’ neighbors are all cranky that he might get away with such a steal.

KHOU.com out of Texas brings us the story of the man who moved into a foreclosed home and filed some paperwork, along with a $16 fee, in the town of Flower Mound, and could end up with his McMansion if he lives in it for three years.

Kenneth Robinson’s new neighbors say he’s a squatter, but he says he is just using the law to his advantage. After the previous owners walked away from the house when it was in foreclosure, the mortgage company went out of business. So Robinson moved in after researching “adverse possession,” a little-known Texas law.

He printed out an online form and filed it at Denton County courthouse for $16 and was granted rights to the house. The home has no electricity or running water, but Robinson just set up camp anyway. The law says he gets exclusive negotiating rights with the original owner. If they want him out, they have to pay off the mortgage debt and the bank would have to file a lawsuit.

Robinson doesn’t think that’s likely, and after three years, he can ask the court for the title to the home. In the meantime, he posted “No Trespassing” signs after his neighbors tried to get him arrested for squatting. Cops can’t remove him because home ownership is a civil, not criminal matter.

“If he wants the house, buy the house like everyone else had to,” says one neighbor. “Get the money, buy the house.”

Or, just pay $16 and still get the house.

Stranger moves into foreclosed home, citing little-known Texas law [KHOU.com]

A long lost island in the North Atlantic Ocean sits on the seafloor, but rivers and mountains and other remnants of its time at the surface remain etched on its features.

NASA’s orbiting astronauts detached a huge storage bin full of trash from the International Space Station on Monday and loaded it aboard Atlantis for the last shuttle ride back to Earth.

Parents who let their toddlers sleep in the same bed as them aren’t slowing their learning and behaviour development, a new U.S. study has found.

Windows and Mac: Tunnelbear is a two-switch VPN service that allows you to access content across the world. In the current version you can only switch between the US and the UK, but that’s still pretty handy if you need a way to get to your favorite content from across the pond. More »

If you’re still waiting to pull the trigger on an Android 3.1 tab, decision day may be coming soon. Back in June, Archos revealed two G9 models: the 8-inch 80 and the 10-inch 101. Well… in case you needed time to save up a little extra dough from your paper route, pricing has been revealed ahead of the September release. The smaller of the two tablets will start out at $299.99 and the more stout of the pair at $369.99 (both 8GB base models), a cool Jackson more than originally reported. Just as a quick refresher, keep in mind that beastly 250GB options are available for both, boasting Seagate’s 7mm Momentus Thin HDD technology. You know, if you’re wanting to carry around your entire Metallica bootleg discography on one of these bad boys.

[Thanks, Elliott]

Archos G9 tablets priced: $300 and up, ship in September originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Archos  | Email this | Comments

via

Chrome: Many of your favorite sites have their own Chrome extensions that offer offline browsing, powerful searches, or other features. There’s a Web App for That is a Chrome extension that, once downloaded, gives suggestions for future extensions based on the sites you visit most often. More »

Fellow geeks, rejoice! What was once believed to be a cesspool of men and sausage is now teeming with female life! That's right, lads—Google+ has a sizable female presence after all! More »

For those who prefer using feed readers to streamline their online consumption, you can now follow individual Google+ user streams via RSS feeds using a webapp called, simply, Google Plus Feed. More »

 When your wife asks, “Do I look fat?”
The correct response is, “Do I look stupid?”

Thanks Denny

Yankees manager Joe Girardi is offering up a new twist in the sign-stealing saga between his team and the Blue Jays, suggesting Toronto “could be” using devious means to acquire information from their rivals. New York catcher Russell Martin said Thursday he suspected the Blue Jays were relaying information from second base to the batter.

Hotmail’s spent the past few years playing catch up with the competition, but for the most part, it hasn’t done anything particularly groundbreaking with its services. Earth shattering might not be the appropriate descriptor for its latest addition, but Hotmail’s added a helpful new feature to distinguish plain old spam from the kind that comes form a trusted source. Now, when you get an email from a friend that smells of something sea dwelling — say a plea for some extra scratch from abroad — you can select “My friend’s been hacked!” from the “Mark as” menu, alerting the powers that be that your friend’s account has been hacked. When you mark a missive as junk, you can likewise click a box that reads: “I think this person was hacked!” Once that’s done, the spammers are kicked to the curb, and your friend is put through an “account recovery flow” the next time they attempt to log in. On the prevention front, Hotmail will soon roll out a new service that blocks users from selecting common passwords. It might not be enough to coax us over, but maybe this time the other guys could learn a few lessons.

Hotmail adds ‘My friend’s been hacked!’ feature to finger phishers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Windows Live  | Email this | Comments

If sales of Apple’s iPod are any indication, the heyday of the MP3 player is over and done with. More »

Good news, aging Earthlings: a team of researchers have found a way to shock a coding patient’s heart, while leaving other organs and tissues undamaged from the defibrillator. The device send a single high voltage pulse of electrical energy to a patient’s chest in order to fix an irregular or nonexistent heart beat; traditionally, what often results is damage to point of contact and surrounding skin cells, muscles and tissues, but a team of whiz kids have seemingly figured out a way to dodge the dreadfulness.

Led by scientists Stefan Luther and Flavio Fenton, the team claims that by using a series of five pulses of less potent shocks (instead of a single concentrated charge), docs can see an 84 percent reduction in damaging power. This new technology — coined low-energy antifibrillation pacing (LEAP) — can also be used in implanted defibrillators, not just the well-known flappy paddles. Due to the relatively low emissions, both the patient and such implants have extended lives. And that, friends, is good for us all — given the impending Robot Apocalypse, we’ll be needing those extra years just to hold down the fort.

Scientists find less damaging defibrillation method, heart tissue relieved originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink IEEE  |   | Email this | Comments

New homes have been found for the seven dogs that were rescued from a rural Saskatchewan residence where they ate the remains of their deceased owners.