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Turn On One or More Computers Remotely Through WakeOnLAN

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U S Mission China Adjudicated More Than 1 Million Visas Visitors Add More Than 5 Billion to US Economy

         Image via Wikipedia

Ambassador Gary Locke announced that the U.S. Mission to China adjudicated more than one million U.S. visas for Chinese applicants during fiscal year 2011.  The U.S. Embassy in Beijing and Consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang and Chengdu all contributed to this accomplishment, which represents a 34 percent increase over last year.

Ambassador Locke stressed the significance of this achievement, �The U.S.-China relationship is profoundly important, and welcoming Chinese visitors to the United States strengthens our cultural and commercial ties.  I am very pleased at the success we have had in significantly reducing wait times for visa appointments this year.�

According to the Department of Commerce, more than 801,000 Chinese visited the United States in 2010.  These visitors added more than $5 billion to the U.S. economy.

The U.S. Mission to China will continue to invite Chinese tourists, students, and businesspeople to visit the United States, a premier destination for travelers from around the world.  The Mission will continue to reduce visa interview wait times to the greatest extent possible by adding staff and eliminating inefficiencies wherever possible.

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Ubuntu Installer paid updated to V2 2 Lots more updates to come!!

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Ubuntu Make the Unity environment more traditional in Ubuntu 13 10 Saucy Salamander

 sudo apt-get remove indicator-appmenu 

 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout :minimize,maximize,close 

 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout close,maximize,minimize: 

 gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal 

 gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode overlay-auto 

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Ubuntu Snap now universal coming to Linux distros like Fedora Arch OpenSUSE and more!

• Arch
• Debian
• Fedora
• Kubuntu
• Lubuntu
• Ubuntu GNOME
• Ubuntu Kylin
• Ubuntu MATE
• Ubuntu Unity
• Xubuntu

• CentOS
• Elementary
• Gentoo
• Mint
• OpenSUSE
• OpenWrt
• RHEL

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Uncharted 3 PS3 The More You Know ★

UNCHARTED 3: DRAKES DECEPTION: (PS3)

The game starts off with our now iconic protagonist, Nathan Drake, walking with old sidekick Sully to what appears to be a seedy bar to make an exchange. A well dressed British man named Talbot opens a case to unveil a buttload of money and in exchange he is handed the ring that hangs from Drakes neck. As the British man authenticates the ring Drake inspects the money.? We find that the ring is legit but the money is not. They try to take the ring back and bar room brawl breaks out where you then take control of the game. You find out that the ring belonged to Francis Drake, and it works as a key to a decoder which will unveil the secrets connecting Francis Drake to Lawrence of Arabia, and why his voyage took a six month detour. The goal is made that you are trying to find the "Atlantis of the Sands" and a valuables it holds.

Marlowe rubbing salt in the wounds sustained from the bar fight.

Essentially the play in the Uncharted series is virtually unchanged from previous two games. The hand to hand combat feels even more dumbed down in this one. In the first game you had a few options: Square five times for a quick combo, Square Triangle Square for a brutal combo, Punch gun combo. It was simple, fast, efficient. In the 2nd game they took away the ability for brutal combo but the 2nd game it still played pretty fluidly. In this current version, it feels more like aimless button mashing. It still works but in the very first combat sequence I was already feeling a bit bored with it. The grab move never seems to push the way I want it to go. They changed the Triangle to a counter and it seems to work fairly well, but that might be because the attack telegraph is retarded long even on the games hardest difficulty. They also have a run and melee thing were if you are blind firing on a guy (shooting without aiming) and hit the melee when you close in, it switches to a short cinematic kill. I found this to be the most effective as I played.

The gun combat feels the same yet different. Functionally, the buttons and engine are the same as before. If you played either of the other two games nothing about the game will seem foreign to you.  Shoulder up with the L1 button, Fire with R1, Reload R2.  Its the same run and gun, cover based 3rd person shooter that has worked in so many over these games before. Yet as I played through the game something just didnt feel right.  As I would play through the game it dawned on me that I would have to hit them with an pretty large amount of bullets before the enemy would drop. On more than one occasion I would land what I could clearly see was a well placed head shot and yet the enemy would still not fall. Sometimes it would take 2 or 3 shots to the head before some enemies dropped. The other big thing that bothered me is that the movement controls did not feel very tight this time around. Several times I would try to run my way for cover only have to Drake bobble step right into a wall or miss my turn completely because he was doing some over the top stagger animation. I would try to move from ledge to ledge while hanging but Id really need to shove on the controller to get him to put his stupid hand up so he would make the right jump instead of just jumping in place. Some other glitchy things kinda bothered me too. There would be an occasional instance where I would be playing the game and then the music would just cut at random, then seconds later would continue on. There were jarring and was surprised to have that happen. Naughty Dog usually polished the hell out of the game.

I was wondering if I was just seeing the older titles through rose tinted glasses, so to make sure, I put in both of the previous titles. The graphics were not as detailed as the 3rd, but the games animation moved faster, the controls were much tighter, and when I hit a clear headshot the enemies dropped. It almost feels like the game sacrificed some of its playability to look nicer...

Speaking of, the graphics in this case definitely appeared to be much more cleaned up and defined. Especially in some of the cutscenes. I played this game pretty much start to finish on a bitchin 62 LED TV with a digital smoothing setting. The game was borderline lifelike and was definitely very impressive, with most of the characters getting a very detailed graphical overhaul, with the exception of Chloe (Naughty dogs Eff you to the Lara Croft character) whos new bigger hair makes her look a bit cartoony.  Aside from that little issue the graphics in this game have never looked better. Elenas eyeliner was a great touch guys.

Elena tries to provide reason but usually ends up right in the fray.

Naughty Dog actually assumes you have a brain this time around too. In this one when you have a puzzle to solve it doesnt just give you the answer outright like it has in previous games. Or at least not immediately anyways.

There is Multiplayer as well but really I didnt find it all that interesting to cover. You get two teams of 5 and you play the standard multiplayer fanfare. Death match, team death match, capture the flag (plunder). You get base equipment but as you level up you get money to unlock new weapons and attires for your character. I played it for a little but online multiplayer never seems to do much for me. There is not level matchmaking so you get thrown in with noobs and vets alike. Usually it will randomize the teams per game to keep things fair but sometimes a clan will get together and just mows through new players. It was a bit of turn off for me. I suck at the multiplayer games. The one plus is the people I played with were pretty cool. One game some loud child was in the game, so of course I quit immediately.

Dont be mad, I brought Subway! (There are no in game advertisements. Thank god)

Why dont the online services provide something for this. You have to put a date of birth in the online account to activate it. Why the fuck cant they make a filter so I can choose to not play anyone under the age 15. Nothing ruins a game experience for me like racist little shitdicks screaming obscenities into their stupid headsets because they can do it anonymously. Parents? I got a news flash for you, if you dont want your children to be subjected to offensive games, dont let them play games online. The worst thing that can be found in a video game is the horrible shit that comes out of a kids mouth. Children are the fucking worst and will always be worse than their teen or adult counterpart.

Playing someone under the age of 12. Yeah, Feels like that.

Ok, got that out of my system, back on topic. The storytelling is still this franchises strong point. I loved how they went with the villain this time around, instead of the usual gun toting psychopath we have Marlow. Marlow is an older woman who is cold, calculating, and definitely a cerebral opponent.  She has a very ominous way of bantering with the heroes. She has that villainous politeness about her that makes every thing she says sound like you are effd. It was a refreshing change from the normal types like Eddy, Novario, or Lazarevic.

But even the new characters and great story telling something still bothered me. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: Drake treks through a jungle and find a series of ruins. Elena gets mad a Drake because they disagree if they should continue or not. Drake and Sully find a treasure or clue they are looking for only to have it taken away by the villain immediately after. They learn what they are after is evil or an evil power that Francis Drake tried to hide. Drake escapes from a ruin or temple from burning or sinking into the ground. In addition to that this game really tries to go over to the top in every level. With the exception of the snow level, the game takes place in pretty much every setting they can squeeze into the game. You go from a bar, sewers, to a jungle, run down manor, ruins, a marketplace, ship graveyard, and so on. Each level with its own incredible Hollywood blockbuster action sequence. I understand that its an action game, but when you cram things in as much as this does, it causes a little bit of an overload and I feel the impressiveness of a scene is diminished because of the not stop onslaught of scenes of this nature.

Drake never learns his lesson to stay off Planes.

Now, dont let this stream of complaints make you think this game wasnt great. I literally played the game from start to finish in a single sitting. None of the complaints were something that affected my ability to enjoy the game. The game has a familiarity at this point and the story is very compelling. Nathan Drake and the rest of the cast of characters are really what make the game so successful and with each passing title the characters have more life and nuance to them. They do a wonderful job of spacing the game out in the timeline so you have to take bits and pieces of dialogue to try to figure out what happened between the two games. The game has a pretty good pace to it and it goes just as long as it has to for a game of this type. My initial play through was about 9 hours. The only thing I fear is actually something said in one of the bonus features: "Where Do we go from here?" How many treasures can Francis Drake have hidden? How many more daring escapes can Nathan possibly get out of? Look, the bottom line here is that Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception is another incredible addition to this franchise, and if you own a PS3 you would be doing yourself an injustice if you didnt play it. My fear is that this game is not preparing itself for longevity, and is starting to show signs of repeating itself. They are still fun for now, but they are going to really need to reach to come up with something new for a 4th installment.

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Ubuntu may be more popular than Linux itself in 2010 BY GOOGLE

Ubuntu is just one of a myriad of Linux distributions, but no one can deny that its rise to fame has been meteoric, especially as a desktop OS.

This week Google announced a �forecast� feature in Google Insights for Search. Essentially it�s a new function that looks at the search history (popularity) of a term and tries to predict what the future trend for that term will look like.

So just out of curiosity we decided to try Ubuntu versus Linux to see what would happen. The dotted line furthest to the right in the chart below is Google�s prediction. We�ve marked the point where the interest for Ubuntu is predicted to overtake Linux with a red arrow, i.e. February 2010.

Since this is based on past data it is in no way a secure prediction of the future, but it does look quite plausible. The interest for Linux (at least as a search term) has long been declining while the interest for Ubuntu has been increasing (although it has slowed down recently).

One interpretation of this data is that the interest for Ubuntu is surpassing the interest for �just� Linux. It�s becoming quite a brand�

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Two Game Combo Deals and More Deal Aggregators

First things first: GameStop has a couple of combo packs on sale featuring the Dead Space and Dragon Age franchises. The Dragon Age pack includes DA: Origins Ultimate Edition and DA2 for $10. This is a ridiculous amount of content for 10 bucks. The Dead Space pack isnt too shabby either, featuring the original game and the sequel for $10. Both combo packs require the GameStop app and as far as I know neither one will activate on Steam, though they might work with Origin.

Continuing on the subject of game deals, there was a reddit post earlier that listed a bunch of deal aggregator sites. I covered a few of these in my Where to Find Gaming Deals Online post a couple of months ago, but a few sites on the reddit list are worth adding to the rotation.

One site in particular that looks pretty solid is IsThereAnyDeal.com; it has a ton of filters that let you sift through deals in addition to price alerts and price history. Some of the game links (particularly those from GreenManGaming) dont point to the correct page, but the author of the site was actively commenting in the reddit thread and mentioned that hed look into it.

All of these deals have ruined me. I dont know if I could bring myself to pay full price for a game ever again - not that thats a bad thing.

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