There was nothing "wrong" with Syndicate. I enjoyed playing it, and on hard it actually got challenging toward the end. The problem for me was that I was playing it and feeling like the developers were so close to something great and instead settled for something mediocre. The powers were cool, but the world was…

Never EVER trust what a salesperson says. They don't know squat about what will and won't be released. This is not a knock against salespeople, this is just that they aren't told this info until way late in the release process. As for the GNex... yup, verizon totally screwed the pooch on that one. It doesn't…

uh... you can preorder one now from verizon. This is also a samsung phone, which means even with the verizon mucking things up its bootloader is unlocked and it is easy to root so you can debloat it yourself no problem.

I WANT TO PLAY THIS!!! I loved Virtual On, and this looks like virtual on only with mechs I know. Not sure why they don't bring it over as I think it would sell like crazy to all the 20-30 somethings who grew up watching Gundam Wing on cartoon network.

cuz they're locking down the OS ala Apple and preventing "unauthorized OSes" from being installed. This won't apply directly to the i5 version of course, but the ARM version will definitely have issues if you want to run non-microsoft approved stuff.

Alright, that cover is pretty damn amazing. Here's hoping the OS keeps up its end of the bargain. Unfortunately until this device is cracked wide open for the rooters/jailbreakers I'm staying clear away from it.

I did just that trip to the Ring, except I tacked on a 3 month road trip across the US and a 1 month backpacking(ish) trip across Europe. As for the Ring itself... I didn't have a rental car (and didn't want to risk getting caught by the companies) so I opted for a ring rental service. When I was there they had race…

when I had an apartment I went with ramps. Ramps are great for small cars with skinny wheels. Get a AWD with some decent meat on the wheels (like 225 or wider) and ramps start getting unwieldy. Good luck if you're running something american and RWD with 300+ on the rear. My advice is to get the lightest strongest…

I wanted one badly until I saw the non-upgradability. I don't really care about removable batteries, but not being able to swap SSDs or RAM is a pretty big deal especially a couple years down the line. $2200+ is a good chunk of change and not being able to keep this laptop going past its obsolete date with more…

Having driven in Milan I think I experienced a much tamer version of this Naples craziness. Its nothing that a well driven east coast driver can't handle, but if you've only driven in west coast traffic then you might be in for a shock. A few simple pointers besides the "redlights are optional" one.

There wasn't (and still isn't, though correct me if I'm wrong) a tool to downgrade from 5.1 to 5.0.1 even with an SHSH blob saved. That's why the 5.0.1 jailbreak was described as "fragile", cuz you could lose it easily if your jailbroken device screwed up in some way.

While you can never truly brick an iDevice, you can very easily get yourself into a position of not being able to jailbreak again until the next version of the OS comes out. I had a jailbreak app (a bluetooth GPS app) completely hose the boot process of an iPad. Unfortunately only a couple days before that Apple…

No... you'll still get soft bokeh, its just your highlights and flares will go all wonky and be strangely shaped (my old 50mm f/1.8 with a 5 blade aperture did this).

If you have something sized like a T3i or smaller then yes, it does make a bit bulky. A f/1.8 isn't bad, but throw a 1.4 on there and its most certainly front heavy. If all you're doing is some daylight shooting then you will almost never need to go down to 1.4 and for that I can see a use case for a pancake lens. …

I have a Samsung TL500 (another high end P&S with f/1.8) and the wide aperture is great when you just want to be able to shoot without flash in a dark setting. At that point you're probably zoomed out anyway. None of those cameras are great portrait cameras because the sensor is too damn small for decent bokeh (its…

You know what? I definitely fit the Aliens bill. I watched both Predator and Armageddon and enjoyed the former and laughed through the latter. I ended up converting from the "WTF did I just watch" camp of Starship Troopers to the "that was so over the top as to be parody of the book" camp (and ended up enjoying it…

This... as long as you don't mind the rather harsh landing

I enjoyed The Mechanic (another movie by West where Statham plays... well, the same character he plays in every movie) so I'm looking forward to this one the small screen. Why the Hitman movie didn't cast Statham as 47 is a question I'm still asking. Oh, and bring back Van Damme and Arnie for an action movie? …

There's no need for RIM to firesale the playbook if they would just unlock the bootloader and let people have an open device. Never gonna happen of course, but if it ever did I'd buy a playbook immediately. It would be the perfect (and I really mean perfect, like all my wants checked) 7 inch android tablet.

As much as I hate contracts, there are (or were) very good reasons to go on contract before. One big one for me was locking down unlimited 4G LTE for at least 2 years right before Verizon went tiered. Good luck finding a prepaid provider that gives LTE speeds (hint... it doesn't exist yet). Contracts are evil, but…