Japanese Gamer Weds Nintendo Character – PC World

Japanese Gamer Weds Nintendo Character

Matt Peckham

Dec 17, 2009 6:02 pm

I’m all for self-aware computers with equal rights and the possibility of human/machine interaction, you know, a couple decades down the line when such things might actually be possible. But falling in love with and marrying a video game character in 2009?

According to news site NTDTV, a 27-year-old college student nicknamed SAL9000 did just that, slipping into a white tux and marrying Nene Anegasaki, a character from Nintendo’s Japanese DS handheld dating game Love Plus. The ceremony took place with 40 attendees…and an internet audience of thousands.

Import site Play Asia describes Love Plus as a “misc” genre DS game that lets you date various girls in an attempt to get them to confess their affection for you. Once they do, you can research dating hot spots and “fantasize” about your “girlfriend” in “dreams” that generate “fantasy images” for your “private perusal.”

The game actually runs on a real-time clock, meaning the girls start their days when you do, break for lunch and dinner, and even respond to seasonal shifts–from sporting short sleeves in the summer to donning coats in the winter.

“Choose a girl to be friendly with in the start of the game,” teases the description, “and proceed toward a romantic relationship.”

Anyone else a little weirded out after reading that?

Is SAL9000′s “hope [that] one day people will be free to love whomever they want – real or virtual” a sign of things to come? Should criticizing someone for “falling in love with” a game character constitute lifestyle persecution?

Or should the legal definition of “a trifle nuts” be extended to include “falling in love with and committing to ‘love and honor’ a behaviorally shallow, intellectually vapid, fundamentally lifeless simulacrum”?

via Japanese Gamer Weds Nintendo Character – PC World.

awesome site of the day – linerider

linerider.com

linerider is a free game where you can create simple or complicated tracks that a snowman on a sled rides on. It is pretty cool and fun, plus some of the tracks that other people come up wtih are awesomely cool!!

definitely check this out!

FireWire vs USB: Which is faster?

Most modern Macs—except for the MacBook Air and some MacBook models—offer both FireWire and USB connections. When shopping for an external hard drive, then, you have many options for something that will work with your Mac. Today, USB hard drives are more common and less expensive than FireWire or even FireWire/USB combo drives.

But ubiquity doesn’t necessarily equate to superiority. All other areas of comparison aside, what many people want to know is how the two technologies match up in terms of speed. USB 2.0 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 480 Mbps, versus 400 Mbps for FireWire 400 and 800 Mbps for FireWire 800. To get a sense of real-world performance, however, we ran drive tests on both a 2.4GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro with a 160GB, 5400RPM internal hard drive and a Mac Pro 3GHz 8-core system with a 250GB, 7200RPM internal drive (each with OS X 10.6.2 and 2GB of RAM installed).

Western Digital My Book Studio

When we connected the MacBook Pro to a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio drive and copied a 1GB file to it from the internal hard drive, we found that it took 23 percent less time over FireWire 400 than over USB 2.0. Duplicating that file using FireWire 400 on the WD drive took 10 percent less time than when run over USB 2.0. To see how the different connections performed in more typical backup tasks, we copied over a 2.5GB folder containing 5000 individual files and folders. In that test, we found the FireWire 400 transfer to be 26 percent faster than USB 2.0. Using AJA’s System Test application, we found the MacBook Pro’s FireWire 400 connection to be 46 percent faster than USB in the writing tests. In the reading tests, however, the edge went to USB, which was nine percent faster than FireWire 400.

Using the same hard drive, but connected to our Mac Pro, we found the FireWire 400 connection to be 19 percent faster than the USB on the copy to the external drive, 21 percent faster on both the duplication test and the copy 5000 files test, and exactly the same in terms of performance difference on the AJA read and write tests as with the MacBook Pro.

Comparing the FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 results on the MacBook Pro with the My Book Studio showed the FireWire 800 connection to be 35 percent faster at copying the file to the external drive, 51 percent faster duplicating that file on the external drive, and 37 percent faster copying over the 5000 files and folders. The AJA write test showed the FireWire 800 connection’s throughput at almost three times faster than the USB connected WD, with 58 percent faster read scores.

The My Book tested on the Mac Pro showed the FireWire 800 connection to be 48 percent faster than USB at copying the file to the external drive, 54 percent faster duplicating the file, and 49 percent faster copying over our 5000 files and folders. The AJA write tests showed the 800 connection writing twice as many megabytes per second as the USB connection, and 49 percent faster reading.

Verbatim portable

We also tested a zippy little Verbatim portable drive, which was 23 percent faster than USB in the copy to external test on the MacBook Pro, 21 percent faster at the duplication test, 14 percent faster on the 5000 file copy test, 42 percent faster on the AJA write throughput, and 8 percent faster on the AJA read throughput.

Connected via FireWire 800, we saw FireWire speeds 42 percent faster than USB at our copy to external test, 55 percent faster on our duplication test, 32 percent faster in the 5000 files test, and two times faster in the AJA read and write scores.

On the Mac Pro, the Verbatim with a FireWire 400 connection was 13 percent faster than USB at our copy to test, 10 percent faster at our duplication test, 12 percent faster in our 5000 file copy test, 18 percent faster in AJA’s write tests and five percent faster than USB in the AJA read tests.

Connected to the FireWire 800 port, the Verbatim was 47 percent faster at our copy to test than when connected over USB. It was 49 percent faster than USB in our duplication tests, 44 percent faster in our 5000 file copy test and again, twice as fast as USB in both the read and write tests we ran using AJA’s System Test software.

via FireWire vs USB: Which is faster? | Storage | From the Lab | Macworld.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs receives salary of $1 in 2009

Steve Jobs was compensated $1 for his work as Apple’s CEO in 2009, a tradition that has existed since 1997.

Steve Jobs officially made $1 in salary in 2009, continuing a tradition started in 1997. Apple disclosed this information in a preliminary proxy statement sent to its shareholders on Wednesday.

Jobs holds nearly 5.5 million shares of Apple’s stock, a position he has held steady since 2003, making his holdings in the company worth over $1 billion. He is also the largest single shareholder in The Walt Disney Co. at 7.4 percent.

Earlier in December, Jobs was named the world’s best-performing CEO in the January-Feburary 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review. He was credited with delivering a 3,188% industry-adjusted return since he rejoined the company as CEO in 1997.

Jobs was given the title “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune for his role in turning Apple into a groundbreaking technology leader and “the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.” He was also a finalist for Time magazine’s 2009 “Person of the Year.”

Apple’s annual shareholder’s meeting is currently scheduled for February 25, 2010.

via AppleInsider | Apple CEO Steve Jobs receives salary of $1 in 2009.

Steve Jobs Apple Tablet

Apple Tablet rumors have exploded in the past few days with reports suggesting that Apple may introduce the device as early as January. A New York Times Blogpost by Nick Bilton adds a few tantalizing tidbits about the upcoming device.

As we’ve known, Bilton reports that Apple has been working on a tablet on-and-off for many years but never felt to be good enough to go to market. Some of the previous technology had already been adapted for the iPhone launch. It seems, however, that Apple has finally gotten the tablet to the point to launch to the market, and according to a current senior employee at Apple, Steve Jobs is said to be “extremely happy with the new tablet.”

Furthermore, another source told Bilton, “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.” No other details are offered as to what this interaction might be. Apple, of course, holds many patents on multi-touch technology and has been expected to apply it to their upcoming tablet. Implementing more advanced gestures have been considered possible, though we’re not sure if this would be considered a surprising interaction.

I am excited to see if they do release this apple tablet. I will probably consider buying one.