Hasta La Gadget!

“Why do women try to get ahead by pulling men down?”

I see comments along these lines pretty much every time the issue of gender inequality in tech comes up. A lot of men (and sometimes women) respond to women suggesting that men have to give up their privilege by saying “So you’re saying that in order for women to get ahead, they have to pull men down?! That’s not fair!” The tricky thing about statements like these is that they’re half true. The problem is that people assume that because they are half true, that means they are completely true. Let me explain…

Via metaphor!

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WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) – The White House proposed legislation on Thursday to cap the pay of federal government contractors at no more than the U.S. president’s annual salary, saying it wanted to stop “wasteful expenditure.”

The president makes $400,000 a year and the current cap on pay for executives at federal contractors is due to be raised in the coming weeks to about $950,000 from $763,000, the White House Office of Management and Budget said.

“This wasteful expenditure of taxpayer resources must stop,” OMB official Joe Jordan said.

Jordan said the cap on contractor pay has climbed so steeply because it is pegged to private sector executive pay increases. The administration’s proposal would allow exceptions in situations where recruitment is difficult.

The change would apply to thousands of employees and save hundreds of millions of dollars annually, Jordan said. But he said he was unable to provide more detailed information.

The caps apply to what contractors can pay their top five executives.

Past efforts to get Congress to agree to lower caps have gone nowhere. Senators Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, a Republican, introduced legislation last year to limit payments to the level of the president’s salary.

The White House proposal could be a small bargaining chip as it spars with congressional Republicans over the best ways to cut federal spending and trim a massive budget deficit that both political parties say they want to tame.

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It’s no secret that PlayStation 4 games will be playable while they are still downloading, a bit of information Sony had let out not too long ago. Not much was given about the feature in terms of how it would work, and how much content users would have to pull down before they could begin playing. Now details have been revealed about the feature as it applies to the game Killzone: Shadow Fall, giving us a glimpse at how it works.

Word has it Killzone: Shadow Fall is set to launch at the same time the PlayStation 4 is released, giving gamers a futuristic city in which they will fight against an invading force. The game appears to be much like other FPS games – linear, with players starting with the first level and then progressing to the next when the previous one is finished. In light of this, the small amount of data gamers have to download before they can begin playing makes sense – just the menu and Level 1.

Such a small amount of the game is surprising to some, but means those with a good Internet connection who choose to go the digital route won’t have to wait too long to begin playing. Once the Main Menu and first level are downloaded, the second level will be downloaded while the first is being played. Assuming it finishes before the level is completed, the next will begin while the second is played, and so on and so for. There’s a chance that – after the initial download – gamers won’t be aware of the rest of the downloading process.

This information was revealed by Michiel van der Leeuw, the technical director of Guerrilla, which developed Killzone, in a Developer Diary. “You’re going to download a chunk of the game, get the menu and first level, and while you’re playing the first level we can start downloading the second in the background. Then the third and so on.”

Of course, such might be a bit of a perfect-world kind of scenario, with those who are in areas with slower Internet services perhaps being stuck waiting a while after each level while the next loads. It is possible that if a slower Internet connection is detected, more of the game may be downloaded before it can be played, but that is speculation. There’s also no word on how this will work for games that aren’t linearly based on one level after the other.

SOURCE: Euro Gamer

PlayStation 4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall play-while-downloading details revealed is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

EA’s Online Pass program has been in the news a bit of late, but that’ll soon change. The voucher’s now set to be phased out completely — earlier this month the company shared that it won’t be including the certificates with new games, but now Game Informer reports that this will apply to existing titles as well. Soon, EA Sports games will no longer prompt users for a code, while numbers for other titles will be made available for free online. The rollout should wrap up over the next few weeks.

Filed under: Gaming

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Via: Joystiq

Source: Game Informer

Here we have another Full HD monitor from iiyama, the ProLite X2380HS-W2. Adopting an IPS panel, this new 23-inch LED-backlight monitor supports a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and provides 1000:1 contrast ratio, 250 cd/m2 brightness, 5ms response time and 178/178 degree viewing angles. It also has two built-in 2W stereo speakers and features D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI connectors. The ProLite X2380HS-W2 will begin shipping from early June for 21,800 Yen (about $213). [Product Page]