Hello once more, readers. Taking a break from my gaming exploits, I realized something. Well a few things actually, one of them won’t be discussed until later on. For good reasons, I assure you. The other I plan to include today, and actually look forward to trying to buy one for myself when funds allow it. So let’s cut to the chase and dive into this week’s T.T. head first.
Two very interesting things have happened in Australia recently. First a bit of a bug with the date of the new year has caused credit/debit card readers using the Bank of Queensland systems to think that it is actually 2016 and not 2010. This means they have been denying transactions of cards with expiration dates before then (read: pretty much all of them). This isn’t the first time a new year has caused some issues in software, anyone remember a little over ten years ago with the Y2K scare? Fun times wasn’t it?
Now, card readers are not the only affected system. Anyone wanna take a shot at guessing who else has a bug showing up? If you said, Windows Mobile phones. Absolutely correct. Their date related bug is a bit less financially impacting though, and limited to Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5. These two versions report text messages received since the new year started as being in 2016. Funny how two unrelated systems read 2010 as 2016. I am very curious to see if this little bug pops up anywhere else.
The second thing to happen in Australia is the group running the Australian net filter system are protesting about the return of, you guessed it, a protest site. While I won’t delve too far into politics or the like here, I do find it a bit…amusing so to speak that apparently the Australian domain name registration organization, against their own rules, continually denied the owners of the site the rights to their domain name during the two weeks it was down. That is until the owners proved they have the right to use the domain name. Hit up this link for more info and links to other sites to get the full story.
Skype will be releasing 720p HD videocalling for PC and specific HDTVs. Specifically ones made by LG and Panasonic that have internet connectivity built in, and both companies are already rolling out HD webcams to take advantage of the new service. So what do you think? Anyone want to videocall from their living room? I personally don’t think I’d use the videocall portion, but maybe if it allowed audio only calls as well I could find a use for it.
Think I will end today with a short discussion of one of the topics I am not withholding till a later date. Today is January 5th. Later today is Google’s conference at Mountain View Campus. Speculation puts today as the day Google will launch their Nexus One Android phone. Which would make me sit in front of my computer staring hatefully at a picture of a phone that I really want, but probably can’t afford yet. Still, this will at least get the phone out into the hands of people for some real world testing. I look forward to scouring the net for bits of information about the phone and how well it performs with day to day tasks.
Well that’s a wrap, everyone. I am off to enjoy some gaming goodnesss and a bit of breakfast…then more gaming goodness. I’ll see you next week, and maybe I might discuss that other topic I didn’t mention this week. Maybe.
