golf – Page 20 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Windows 10 won’t run games with SecuROM DRM, says Microsoft

While Windows 10 is largely good news for gamers , it turns out that those with a collection of older games laden with DRM copy protection software are going to have a hard time getting them up and running on the new OS. In an interview with Rocket Beans TV (as translated by Rock, Paper, Shotgun ) at this year’s Gamescom, Microsoft’s Boris Schneider-Johne explained that that Windows 10 won’t be able to run games that use SafeDisc and SecuROM technology. “Everything that ran in Windows 7 should also run in Windows 10,” said Johne, “There are just two silly exceptions: antivirus software, and stuff that’s deeply embedded into the system needs updating—but the developers are on it already—and then there are old games on CD-ROM that have DRM. This DRM stuff is also deeply embedded in your system, and that’s where Windows 10 says, ‘Sorry, we cannot allow that, because that would be a possible loophole for computer viruses.’ That’s why there are a couple of games from 2003-2008 with SecuROM, etc. that simply don’t run without a no-CD patch or some such.” This isn’t a bad thing for most people, though. While SafeDisc has hit the headlines before thanks to security issues in Windows— introducing access vulnerabilities into the OS , for example—it’s SecuROM that is the most famous, and the most hated of all DRM software. Developed by Sony DADC, SecuROM took a heavy-handed approach to DRM, limiting the number of installs and activations end-users had access to, as well as requiring users to check in online to keep the game running. SecuROM even counted certain hardware changes as a change of computer, forcing another activation. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 won’t run games with SecuROM DRM, says Microsoft

People in rough neighborhoods trade HIV meds instead of taking them

The social environment of an area, including factors such as poverty, stress, and living conditions, contributes to the disease burden. A recent study published in AJPH shows that patients from a disordered environment don’t stick to their medication schedule, even for a potentially lethal condition like HIV. As the researchers found, residents of highly disordered neighborhoods will sell or trade their antiviral medication rather than taking it and adhering to their drug plans. Poverty, a condition often associated with specific geographic regions or neighborhoods, is linked to many poor health outcomes. People living in poverty often lack access to nutritious food, good healthcare, strong social support, and other structural advantages that can ensure better health. Neighborhood disorder theory focuses on the role of economic disadvantage as a driver of adverse health outcomes among residents of poor neighborhoods. In previous studies, neighborhood disorder has been linked to increased HIV risk-taking behavior, which helps explain why HIV infections tend to cluster in areas with higher poverty and other forms of risk taking. For this study, researchers interviewed 503 socioeconomically disadvantaged HIV-positive substance users, approximately half of whom were selling or trading their antiviral medication to other HIV positive individuals who didn’t have access to regular antiviral medication. Participants were from neighborhoods in urban Miami that have high and persistent levels of both HIV infections and poverty. Additionally, environmental risk factors were examined for these neighborhoods, such as prevalence of HIV and poverty levels. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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People in rough neighborhoods trade HIV meds instead of taking them

Comcast VP: 300GB data cap is “business policy,” not technical necessity

Why does Comcast Internet service have a 300GB monthly data cap? When asked that question today, Comcast’s vice president of Internet services, Jason Livingood, said that he doesn’t know, because setting the monthly data limit is a business decision, not one driven by technical necessity. “Cable Cares,” a parody account on Twitter, asked Livingood, “Serious question, why are Comcast’s caps set so low compared to the speeds they’re being sold at? 100mbps can hit 300GB in 6hr~.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast VP: 300GB data cap is “business policy,” not technical necessity

Xbox streaming on Windows 10 has a hidden “very high quality” setting

In reviewing Windows 10’s new “Streaming from Xbox 10” feature , Ars’ Sam Machkovech complained that “streamed Xbox One games look significantly worse through Windows 10, even at the highest-quality setting.” Apparently, though, Sam wasn’t actually testing the “highest quality” setting available in the streaming app. That’s because there’s a newly uncovered “very high quality” option that can be unlocked by tinkering with some of the Xbox app’s configuration files. Reddit user OomaThurman has publicized the method for unlocking this hidden quality setting, which involves editing the “userconsoledata” file in your Xbox app folder. You can activate the new higher-quality setting by setting the “IsInternalPreview” flag from “false” to “true,” a naming convention that strongly suggests this feature is part of an early test that will be formally rolled out to all Windows 10 users in the future. We’ll be trying out this hidden feature for ourselves soon, but the folks at Digital Foundry already found a marked jump in quality when using the “very high” setting, saying it “appears to transmit full 1080p imagery.” Comparison shots published by Digital Foundry show a noticeable increase in sharpness of details like faces, hair, and edges, which are much closer to the “source” image with the new setting. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Snapdragon 820 is official: A look at its GPU (and how much the chip matters)

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 and 808 will continue to be its flagship chips for the rest of this year, but, as we’ve written, the 810 in particular has been problematic for the company. It had a gift for generating both heat and bad press , and, while the Snapdragon 808 didn’t suffer from the same problems, it was less of an improvement over older 800-series chips. As this has been happening on the technical side, things have been looking less rosy on the financial side. Qualcomm’s outlook for Q4 of 2015 ( PDF ) sums it up nicely: there’s “increased concentration” at the high end of the market, pushing out phones that use Snapdragon SoCs (the huge worldwide success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus can be at least partially blamed); “lower demand” for high-end Snapdragons from one of Qualcomm’s major customers (read: Samsung, which is using its own chips in high-end Galaxy phones); and lowered sales of “certain handset models” in China using high-end Snapdragons. Some of this could be attributed to the 810 specifically, but a lot of it would be happening no matter how good the chip was. Most of the money in consumer electronics is in high-end, high-margin products, but Apple controls an overwhelming amount of that market , and the company only uses Qualcomm’s modems, not the (presumably more expensive and profitable) Snapdragon SoCs. The wider smartphone market continues to grow, but companies like Xiaomi and Motorola are willing to sell to good-to-great phones for one-third to one-half of what you’d pay for a flagship, and those phones often use lower-end, less-profitable Qualcomm SoCs or chips from an upstart like MediaTek or a newly competitive Intel. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Snapdragon 820 is official: A look at its GPU (and how much the chip matters)

No more endless CDs for pennies: Columbia House files for bankruptcy

It’s a sad day for the musical childhood of many generations. The Associated Press is reporting that the parent company of Columbia House, the organization behind the famous music and DVD clubs of yore, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move comes after nearly 20 years of declining sales according to the AP. Filmed Entertainment (Columbia House’s parent company) told the wire service that revenue hit a high of $1.4 billion in 1996. In 2014, that figure fell to $17 million (or roughly 1 percent of its peak, the AP notes). While Chapter 11 protection doesn’t necessarily mean Filmed Entertainment intends to go out of business, it’s not looking good. Companies like RadioShack and Kodak have done this in recent years to obtain a certain period of time within which to rebuild itself and shield itself from creditors. Kodak at least emerged from its situation. The service started in 1955 with vinyl records, and Columbia House introduced pop culture fans to many, many film and music entities over the years through its service. It operated on offers like eight CDs for 1¢ (plus shipping!) or an 8-track tape of the month club (relying on a “return or pay to keep” philosophy). But physical media at large has gradually fallen out of favor over the years, and services from Napster to Netflix to iTunes all overlap with what Columbia House intended to do. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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No more endless CDs for pennies: Columbia House files for bankruptcy

In just 2 years, Zynga’s daily average users have fallen by half

Have you played any Zynga games lately? Yeah, we didn’t think so. And that’s exactly the problem: in two years, the social gaming company’s daily average users (DAU) has plummeted from 39 million to 21 million. Consequently, on Thursday, Zynga announced that it had lost $26.8 million in the second quarter of 2015, and a total of $73.3 million in the first half of the year. Assuming that rate of loss holds, the company is on pace to lose over $150 million in 2015, and that’s on top of the over $472 million the company already lost from 2012 through 2014. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In just 2 years, Zynga’s daily average users have fallen by half

Last New Zealand coal plant reaches the end of the line

Yesterday, one of New Zealand’s major energy producers announced that it is planning on shuttering the last of the country’s coal-fired power stations in 2018. The plant’s extended life comes despite the fact that running it has become economically marginal—the company that runs it says it is locked into a coal delivery contract until mid-2017 and has substantial stockpiles on site. New Zealand is fortunate to have abundant renewable energy sources, including a number of large hydroelectric plants. Fossil fuels have mostly been used to supplement the hydroelectric production during years of lower rainfall. But the country has also benefitted from trends that are seen in most other industrialized nations. Energy demand has largely been stable due to increased efficiency, while the cost of other renewable power sources has dropped. In New Zealand’s case, those new sources are wind and geothermal (part of the country sits atop a subduction zone). As the costs of developing wind and geothermal have dropped, the coal fired plant was being used less frequently. “These units have largely been operating at the margin of the market for a number of years, at very low utilisation rates,” said company CEO Albert Brantley. Shuttering them is expected to save the company over NZ$20 million a year. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Last New Zealand coal plant reaches the end of the line

Faster booting, smaller footprint make Windows 10 an easy upgrade for old PCs

A whole bunch of people are going to upgrade to Windows 10. Not everyone . But when you offer free Windows via a nag message delivered to over 80 percent of the user base, you’re going to attract people who wouldn’t have driven to MicroCenter to buy an upgrade DVD. Especially if you bought an eligible PC in Windows 7’s heyday, you will probably be installing the new OS on five- or six-year-old hardware that has long since been forgotten about by the company that sold it to you. Or maybe you bought something during the post-Chromebook era, where Windows PCs dipped back into netbook territory in their quest for a low price tag. We installed Windows 10 on a few of these kinds of systems to see what you can expect, at least if you’re comparing a clean install to a clean install. Current users of both Windows 7 and Windows 8 should expect to recover a few gigabytes of drive space, a few megabytes of system RAM, and a few precious seconds of boot time. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Faster booting, smaller footprint make Windows 10 an easy upgrade for old PCs

Chrome tests “discarding” background tabs to save memory

How many tabs do you have open right now? I’m currently writing and researching this article, writing and researching another, longer article, listening to SoundCloud, and monitoring Ars chat, TweetDeck, and Parsely—so I’ve got 71 tabs open across my six monitors taking up 10GB of RAM. (I admit that I’m probably on the upper end of things.) I’m not using all of those tabs right now, but I do need them open—open tabs are my to-do list. The problem is that Chrome keeps all of these tabs up and running at 100% whether I’m using them or not. This is bad for memory usage and—if you’re running on a laptop—power usage. A new feature being tested in the nightly “Canary” version of Chrome seems like a boon for heavy tab users like me: it will “discard” tabs that aren’t being used when it encounters a low-memory situation. “Discarding” a tab doesn’t mean forcibly closing a tab, just suspending it and unloading it from memory. The tab itself would still be visible in the tab bar, but unloading it would save your computer the work of keeping it running. The feature has existed in Chrome OS for some time, but now it’s moving over to Windows and Mac OS, with a Linux implementation coming soon. Chrome has a tab ranking system, and it would automatically suspend your “least interesting” tabs when it hits a low-memory situation. A Chromium.org page lists the ranking system for tabs: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments