Raspberry Pi - $25 Linux PC for Students

The inexpensive personal computer used as a tool for education is something we once had, and many machines like this started the computing lives of geeks who lived in the 1970s and 1980s. The Commodore 64, TRS-80 and to a lesser extent, Apple's earliest computers took a hobby interest in computing and deveoped it for people who would later use computers their entire lives. Network administrators, computer programmers and many game designers grew up with these sorts of machines and they are indirectly responsible, in part, for the breakthroughs in computers over the last two-plus decades. Now that we have computers everywhere, however, the cheap hobbyist machine that can be used to teach programming and tinkering for students and geeks who want to learn more by doing just isn't around anymore. Most computers in homes cost between several hundred and several thousand dollars, and for fear of ruining the family PC, experimentation is frequently discouraged. This is a problem, and the designers behind the Raspberry Pi project have a solution: the $25 PC.

While it is true that most laptops and desktop models can only come so far down in price, there are computers in many other devices that rival their desktop cousins from only a few years ago in terms of performance. Mobile phones and tablet computers have taken miniaturized components and packed quite a bit of processing power into a small space, and the SD memory cards and flash drives made today have storage capacity larger than full sized hard drives did only six or seven years ago. The Raspberry Pi was built with these sorts of components in mind, using a small mainboard with several dataports out for USB, HDMI and audio, and open source Linux builds as an operating system on flash memory. The goal is to have a reasonably fast and powerful basic computer that can handle media, programming and internet that can be manufactured at a price low enough to be sold at the same price as a standard textbook.

The original prototypes for the project were a little larger than the average flash drive, but the features that the developers wanted to include couldn't fit comfortably in that configuration. The charitable Raspberry Pi Foundation, headquartered in the UK, moved development to a board slightly larger than a credit card. The CPU will run at 700Mhz, with 128MB of SDRAM, HD-Quality video with both HDMI and Composite output for connection to either a monitor or a television set, with about 1W power requirements allowing for power through an adapter or about 4 AA size batteries. Peripherals can be attached using a simple USB hub, and the overall package is impressive given the price of the components and size of the completely functional computer. The hardware will ship with all open-source software, the Debian GNU/Linux distro, Iceweasel, kOffice and Python, and storage will be upgradable based on the size SD/MMC/SDIO memory cards purchased to be used as a hard drive.

Once units are ready to ship, there will also be a second model with more RAM and built-in ethernet for wired networking for about $10 more. The prototypes have been shown to audiences running Quake 3 at 1080p and full-HD video for other media, and the finished product promises CD-quality audio as well. With all these basics in place, this is not intended to replace a main PC, or to run any Windows software (or even WINE for emulation,) but this computer isn't for gaming or for a household's daily use. This is a small, cheap and functional PC that can be used to teach computing in places where budgetary restrictions have made educational computers a pipe-dream. Worldwide access to a machine designed for experimentation and learning could very well bring up a whole new generation of brilliant developers and programmers for tomorrow's advances in computer technology.

The speed for basic operations and media on this little PC is really something.

This is exciting for me, as I've always been fascinated by the idea of Linux as an OS, but as a gamer I can't ever really sever ties to Windows as an Operating System. I love the idea of tinkering and getting into the nuts and bolts of computers, but I wouldn't dare mess with too many things under the hood of my main PC. I've already "bricked" several devices, and I remember the panic and frustration that can come with having to rebuild the machine I use daily (which is also why I stopped building my own Pcs, hardware conflicts are no fun.) After the initial rush of orders from people curious about the project, if they can continue to manufacture enough of these mini-computers to keep up with demand, I may well pick one up to mess around with. By design, the price of these things encourages the "get one and play with it a little" sort of thinking, and answers my reservations about really getting into Linux. I've heard that putting together a Linux PC is a little like getting a car from IKEA, you have a bunch of parts and instructions on how to put it all together, but there's a lot of effort in figuring out how to assemble it so it all works. At 25 bucks, a lot more people would give it a shot, which is what the Raspberry Pi Foundation is counting on.

Link roundup

1. The podcast from the latest Acquisitions Incorporated Dungeons & Dragons adventure (starring: Wil Wheaton, Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik, Scott Kurtz, and Chris Perkins) has been posted.

2. Cross-section of an undersea cable.

3. Core77:

For this month's 1-Hour Design Challenge, we invite participants to design a suit of armor or weapon suitable for the world of G.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones.

Social Networking Sites: Change, Privacy and Controversy.

In the course of an average day, I spend quite a bit of time using social media. This site, in a way, falls into that category. Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit and StumbleUpon form a part of my daily computing that is just as important as blogging, gaming or email online. Whenever there is a controversy with one or more of these sites, it is usually as a result of something changing. Facebook changes privacy options or redesigns the user interface, a site has trouble maintaining uptime, makes inappropriate use of user information, or policies are adopted that the public objects to, sometimes very vocally. In the past weeks, there have been a lot of angry social media users and a lot of controversy happening at a few of the most popular sites and services. I'd like to summarize a few of those and talk about what the issues are, and what, in my opinion, they mean (if anything.)

Google+ and Real Names:

Google has dodged the wrath of the rich and powerful by not really requiring
"real names", just the "name you are best known by in daily life."

This controversy is the oldest of the ones I want to talk about, but since it is ongoing, it remains as relevant as the others. When the new social networking site was launched, it was embraced by many of the standard early adopters. Among the tech-savvy people who got in early were many bloggers, myself included. This highlighted one of the drawbacks to Google's answer to Facebook: No pseudonyms. Many bloggers prefer to only be known by the name given their internet identity, and with Google+ giving people the ability to add people whose opinions they'd like to hear without worrying if they'd get an add back, it seemed to be a good platform for online celebrities. If someone is only known by their online identity to a large audience, a profile tied to their real name isn't much use.

The debate over online anonymity goes beyond whether I'd rather have my Google Plus account under "Docstout" or not. There are many people online who cannot express their opinions without danger to themselves and those dear to them. Political dissenters, whistleblowers, victims of abuse or harassment, or anyone with an unpopular opinion are all the sort of people silenced in the name of "People are nicer without anonymity." These people cannot protect themselves, but 50 Cent is allowed a profile under that name in a disgusting display of inequality. Google+ finds itself in the position of protecting the wrong people and things. This is likely because their strategy for integration of services across Gmail, Google + and the rest of their online presence hinges on virtual "ownership" of people's online identities, and that product isn't as valuable if you aren't who you say you are. Unless you are wealthy and/or famous, of course.

Facebook Rolls Out Changes, Affects User Privacy (Again.):

Facebook has done stuff like this so much, it is hardly news anymore.

Google isn't the only company attempting to stake a claim in the online presence of its users, and their attempts to use that information has, over the years, resulted in many privacy scandals. User's names and photos in targeted advertising, how and when you use the social network, and even where you are physically present are all related to ever-changing privacy settings. The least private settings are set as defaults, with users constantly needing to "opt out" of having personal information shared with acquaintances, strangers and large companies. The latest round of changes put a mini-newsfeed showing virtually every action your friends perform on the site, including comments on pictures or the status of people you may not even know.

The anger over these changes seemed for the most part directed at things being visually different, which isn't anything new. Missed in the outcry is a simple fact that most people don't understand about Facebook. The reason the site is able to remain free to use, well maintained and with new features constantly being added is that Facebook users aren't the customer. Facebook users are the product being sold. I find the small amounts of personal information I allow the site and its partners to use is a fair trade for what I get out of the deal, but I recognize the arrangement for what it is. Wherever possible, I limit sharing of what I don't want shared, opt out where I can, and recognize that the many people who won't go through the steps to do that make the scheme profitable, so it is unlikely to change or go in another direction.

StumbleUpon Removes Blogging and Theme Features:

Et tu, StumbleUpon?

This is the newest of the controversies in Social Media, and one likely to impact me personally, if indirectly. I was a StumbleUpon early adopter, I've clicked the Stumble button over 76,000 times, and quite a bit of my traffic to this site comes from the service. I've never really used StumbleUpon's themes or blogging features, however, and these specific services will soon no longer be offered. Profile Pages will be limited to text and an avatar image, comments will be text-only instead of allowing HTML, and overall functionality beyond sharing sites with the network will be diminished. Most of the services that put StumbleUpon in the Social Networking category at all will be severely limited or cut completely, and many people are moving on. For every person that stops using the network, it gets a tiny bit weaker.

Why would a company do that? It seems that these features require time and money to continue to support through maintenance and helpdesk issues, and there aren't enough people using them to justify an expense. The style of blogging on StumbleUpon has mostly been replaced by Tumblr, with reblogging/sharing content and posting photos with brief thoughts about them. Removing these features means less time patching the security vulnerabilities their existence creates, and more time focusing on the core concept of StumbleUpon, which is delivering sites based on what someone likes at the press of a button. I don't like the idea of a mass exodus from the network, as the content is fresher and more varied in scale with how many people participate, but I understand the reasons behind this controversy in general.

Yeah, it is pretty much like that.

What these three stories have in common is, of course, money. Things that make users upset or angry are being changed anyway because even with those who leave over the situation, there is a profit to be made in going a certain direction. Every person needs to decide for themselves where their personal line is between what they get from a free online service and what is done with that service in order to make it a profitable business. In the next few years, whichever site can best balance its need to be profitable with keeping a large base of users happy will likely be the most successful in the long run.

Cell Phone Hackers, Nude Celebrities, and Data Security in the News.

There's been a lot in the news lately about mobile devices and e-mails hacked, and sensitive information being used for nefarious purposes. Just this morning, nude photographs of Scarlett Johansson taken on a mobile device appeared on the internet. (And no, I'm not posting them, or a link where to find them, that's not what I do here.) The whole affair got me thinking about online privacy, people being tech-savvy (or not,) and how that is changing our daily lives. There are risks and bits of conventional wisdom concerning them that plain did not exist a decade ago, and many of the safeguards people use are less effective than a cheap lock on your front door. We've got major media outlets being prosecuted for using hackers for journalism, and the FBI tracing hackers who hoard and leak pictures of famous people in intimate moments and compromising positions.

The latest target of mobile hacking, resulting in embarrassing photos made public.

The controversy erupted pretty early this morning as the photographs of Ms. Johansson were first leaked to celebrity websites and soon made their way out to larger and more popular sites such as reddit. I'm not going to climb on a high horse here. I looked immediately, and didn't even think of implications of the leaked photos for a good long time. The involvement of the FBI and someone noticing that the wallpaper in one of the pictures matched the photographs taken of one of the star's homes seemed to confirm the authenticity of the shots. Months ago, a group of hackers claimed to have infiltrated the mobile phones and e-mail accounts of a number of celebrities and claimed they had nudes that they would slowly release "when they felt like it." At the time, the reports weren't taken particularly seriously, but their claims were, at least in this case, true.

Let me start by saying that this sort of behavior is obviously an invasion of privacy, and the cautions I'll go into regarding this sort of situation are in no way meant to imply that the targets deserved their private information copied and distributed without their consent. I don't think "you should lock your doors" equates to "if you don't lock your doors, it is ethically okay to break into your home." Today's news isn't the first time pictures have been taken off of a computer or phone and distributed on the internet, as Paris Hilton, Jessica Alba, Blake Lively and Vanessa Hudgens have been targetted for this sort of activity in the past. Pictures all of those young women would rather not have been made publicly available have popped up on the internet. News of the World found itself in serious legal trouble over the hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler's cell phone and unauthorized accessing of her voicemails.

This is not a secure device. Smartphones are like flimsy doors with toy locks to hackers.

What does all this tell us? Something the tech savvy could have told anyone who cared to ask years ago. Email, digital storage, cell phones connected to a network... none of these things are secure. The best solutions we've come up with for securing our privacy online typically prove more effective in keeping us out of our own accounts when we forget a password, than they are at keeping out someone who wants into our data badly enough, as illustrated by this comic at XKCD. It is reasonable, given the near total failure of data security measures against those determined to beat them, that the only way to secure personal data up to and including nude pictures is to make sure that files containing them are not stored digitally at all. Any attractive woman taking racy pictures using a digital camera or cell phone must assume those pictures will get out, as more than one schoolteacher can attest to.

If password protection isn't effective in securing our privacy, then what is? For the people who aren't tech-geeks, awareness that these things aren't foolproof helps. Treat your devices with digital storage with the same care that you give physical property. If you leave packaging for expensive new electronics at the side of the road for garbage pickup, don't secure doors and leave home for an extended period of time, the risk of a break-in is much greater. Even if you take precautions, if someone wants into your home badly enough, they will likely be able to get in. Awareness that pictures, e-mail accounts and the like are no different should help theaverage person take greater care with that information, securing it against casual intrusion and copying of your data. For those with particular risk, encryption, while not 100% secure, should be used to safeguard sensitive information.

There is no way to be 100% secure with private information, unless it is not stored
or transmitted digitally at all, something that becomes harder to do as the years pass.

Items like provocative photographs of famous people on devices with as little security as a mobile phone, or sent through unencrypted email is likely to be accessed. It is the equivalent of having a very expensive stereo system in a car parked in a rough neighborhood with the windows down. It doesn't matter that the doors are locked or that potential thieves don't have your keys. For those who know how, it is a trivial matter to get at your property. If I had information that I wanted to keep secure, that could hurt or embarass me or people I care about if it got out, I'd have to treat it like my property in the real world. I don't leave things in my car, where a broken window allows a curious thief to go through my property to see if it is worth stealing. This doesn't excuse the behavior of thieves who go around smashing the windows of people who don't take precautions, but I'd rather take sensible steps to limit my risk.

Security experts are working on the essential difficulty in balancing effective methods of protection against making those methods easy to use. One of the more interesting advances is the authenticator used for securing World of Warcraft accounts. Users can order a keychain device or download a mobile application to generate a random code that must be input when trying to access an account. This increased level of security means that an account thief would need access to their target's authenticator or phone in addition to username and password, or else a much more sophisticated method of bypassing the authentication would be necessary for unauthorized access. Overnight, account theft associated with those accounts protected by an authenticator dropped to almost nil. I'd like to see how this sort of security thinking could be applied to protecting other sensitive data, even if it does mean that my curiosity regarding what a starlet looks like naked must go unsatisfied.

A Coming Storm – Bandwidth Caps, Streaming Content and Cloud Computing.

Not so long ago, Cable and Broadband Internet provider Comcast was in the news over the disconnection of a customer for excessive broadband use. Now, It'd be easy for me to write a page and a half of Comcast hate on this topic, as many people who have had dealings with that company have been dissatisfied with their service. However, the issue is more complicated than "Comcast Sucks," there are readers out there who live in countries or areas of the US where Comcast isn't even an option, and what is going on affects anyone who uses the internet, or it soon will. This issue skirts perilously close to the politically-charged concept of Net Neutrality, so we may drift into that discussion as well.

Since the early days of the internet, the companies that provide access have sought a way to change fee structures to either a usage-based model (like mobile phones have) or content-priority model (like Cable TV.) It makes sense, on its surface. People are willing to pay a certain amount for internet access, but technology moves ever forward, and new infrastructure, better speeds and more bandwidth cost more for the provider, without providing significant additional revenue. The problem is, since the time of America On-Line as a dial-up service, customers have unilaterally rejected any attempts to carve up service or to charge on a per-hour basis. However, customer outrage only accomplishes so much, especially in regions where there is little or no competition. A customer can be as angry as they like, but if they cannot take their business elsewhere, they have little recourse.

The massive costs associated with establishing a network infrastructure capable of providing residential high-speed internet has created a unique situation. In order to entice companies to create and do at least minimal improvements and maintenance on those lines, governments offer a regulated monopoly in many cases to recoup those costs. Unfortunately, the legal definition of "competition" in networking doesn't keep pace with technological development, so even after exclusive contracts run out, virtual monopolies may remain in place because while there is technically competition, the service alternatives may not provide a reasonable level of service. This leaves large areas with two, or even just one legitimate options for internet service as the norm, rather than the exception, and all sorts of customer abuse and anti-competitive practice can take place outside the auspices of laws designed to protect consumers from monopolies.

Well, not that sort of Monopoly, but you get my point.

These companies provide access to their network, but would, of course, prefer that individual customers not use all of their capacity all the time. If a significant percentage of customers did this, the network couldn't handle it, meaning more expensive and difficult network upgrades for the same fees. Since the public won't stand for certain changes to fee structuring, and in some countries internet access has been classified as a basic human need along with other essential utilities, blunting the power of the monopoly, something has to give. The solution was intially to throttle certain types of traffic, slowing down the connection for users who are performing certain network operations. The legal and ethical concerns around snooping into data entering or leaving customer homes made this a poor solution, and the concept of a bandwidth cap was instituted.

Coming at the issue from another angle, normal and legal consumer uses for bandwidth-hevy operations seem to be increasing daily. Streaming video through YouTube and similar services, High-Definition TV and Film by way of Netflix, Hulu and HBOGo, Voice-over-IP telephone service like Skype scratch the surface of high-bandwidth use. Cloud computing shares hardware and network resources to use applications like Google Documents, run websites like Reddit and provide online virtual backup drives for long-term storage that is not at risk of a single power outage or natural disaster wiping out all copies of important files. As these services become more popular, a whole lot of data needs to be transferred around, and that means more bandwidth and strain on the networks.

It isn't just pirates using large amounts of bandwidth anymore.

It was easy at first for large companies to "sell" the concept of bandwidth caps by insinuating that unless someone was a filthy pirate illegally downloading and uploading "stolen" intellectual property, that the caps wouldn't affect anyone. These caps have been in place in many areas for three or more years, and the hard limits are not going up, despite the increasing demand for bandwidth in legitimate internet traffic. Average caps in the US are currently around 250GB/Mo for service providers who also provide cable TV, leading to accusations that these caps are in place partly to discourage use of streaming video services that compete with cable television services. In Canada, caps are frequently even lower, especially away from large metropolitan areas where caps are as low as 25-60GB per month. That is as low as 12 HD films streamed over a connection in a month before disconnection of service. In Europe, the figures vary wildly, as the geographic size of areas needing to be covered by lines for networking is comparatively smaller in many countries, which in some places allows for better networks and more healthy competition.

Land lines, laptops and desktops aren't the only devices running into monitored and limited internet usage. As the internet speeds on mobile devices has improved over the years, customers found ways to use Unlimited data plans to "tether" mobile devices to computers for a comparable high-speed internet connection to DSL or Cable. As a result, many mobile providers no longer offer such plans as a financial necessity. It isn't just the cable companies and DSL providers that would prefer a customer who only uses their connection to check e-mail and play Farmville. With more devices in production that are connecting to the internet this tug of war will only get worse. Tablet PCs, gaming devices, internet radio receivers, and e-book readers are in use now, and even curiosities like digital picture frames with their own e-mail address to be mailed photos for display are currently on the market, and all will use a bit of bandwidth.

Pressure on world goverments and dedicated public relations campaigns representing both consumers and the interest of Internet Service Providers are fighting this issue out as we speak. At stake is how much and based on what criteria people will pay for internet access, and the difficult balancing act of maintaining a reasonable profit for companies who pay to establish and upgrade critical data networks against the growing needs of consumers and their desire for fair pricing. These are already many essential services that rely at least partially on internet access, so the argument declaring it a luxury weakens every year. I will, at the very least, be keeping a close eye on the outcome of this battle in both laws passed around the globe, and the court of public opinion.

Futuristic Shopping – Groceries via QR codes scanned by Smartphone.

A lot of geeks who grew up watching classic cartoons dreamed of living in a futuristic world like the one we saw depicted in the old-school vision of what future life would be like. Commuting in a flying car, robotic servants and automatic housing that does nearly everything for you at the touch of a button. The future envisioned 50 years ago hasn't arrived yet, but every once in a while, tech news shows us an advance that suggests it is getting just a little bit closer. The portable electronic devices used for communication and entertainment get a little better each year, and visionaries innovate with these platforms to make lives easier a bit at a time. No matter what someone wants to do with their business, it is always easiest to attract customers by appealing to their sense of convenience. Someone who might not pay extra for quality, novelty or might not switch from a brand they are used to is more likely to buy a product based not primarily on price, but convenience. This concept is at the heart of a kind of store in South Korea that looks like it belongs in a cartoon's vision of the future.

When I first heard about a virtual grocery, this is pretty much what first came to mind.

Tesco (who recently changed their name to HomePlus there,) the 2^nd largest grocery store chain in Korea was confronted with a problem. Their largest competitor had many more stores than they did, and opening new locations is a great way to gamble potential profits by greatly increasing overhead. They decided to try an unconventional solution to the problem of not being able to grow and remain competitive without opening many new locations. South Korea has a high population density and many professionals have long working hours and short leisure time, so running necessary errands is inconvenient and stressful. Another thing that is interesting about South Korea is the level of smartphone adoption is extremely high throughout the population as compared to the US and many countries in Europe. Web-based grocery stores have had some limited success, but shopping for your food on a smartphone screen while waiting for the train to or from work isn't really a solution many people will accept.

Tesco decided to take another sort of gamble, with virtual supermarkets in subway stations, life sized pictures of food and drink on shelves that look enough like an actual supermarket for people to be able to shop. The photographs have QR codes that can be scanned with a smartphone's camera to add the product into a virtual shopping cart for home delivery, a service that has been developed with the ability to provide home delivery within hours rather than days. Looking at the virtual stores it is interesting to note that the products aren't lined up, in general with only one on the “shelf” except in cases where there are multiple varieties or flavors, just like actual displays in physical stores. The experimental stores have proven successful even beyond the short period where novelty could be expected to be the primary factor in people trying things out.

I'd like to see QR codes used in the US for more than stupid gimmicks in entertainment.

There are a lot of downsides to doing weekly shopping for the home in a shop like this, and reasons why a similar idea would have trouble taking root here in the US for the moment. For a lot of people, the tactile sense of being able to pick up and look at a container or individual item is very important in selecting something like food. Also, the produce and meat in a virtual supermarket is a photograph of a perfectly fresh item, and anyone who has compared the food inside a container to the picture on the outside knows how different the reality can be from pictures taken for marketing purposes. Whatever is delivered to the home is what is selected at a warehouse before shipping, with the control over quality of the individual piece of fruit, vegetable or cut of meat out of the individual control of the customer. Even with the fastest possible delivery time, there's also something to be said for not wanting to wait for a delivery service to arrive, though in this case, if you REALLY want it now, maybe you're willing to travel to a shop.

Presuming that service quality makes some of those questions a non-issue, and that convenience trumps the rest, there are still logistical differences between South Korea and many other countries. The primary obstacle standing in the way of something like this taking root somewhere outside of South Korea is the rate of smartphone adoption is much lower elsewhere. Virtually 100% of the South Korean population has a mobile phone, and almost a third of those are smartphones. In the US, rate of adoption is on the rise, but isn't where it would need to be for a service like this to be a smart business to open, at least for now. Home delivery in Seoul has already been nearly perfected, something made easier by the extreme population density allowing for a successful delivery service to drop off many packages in a single run. The “convenience factor” starts to tarnish a little in countries that don't have a home delivery service industry developed to the point where it can be run profitably without a lot of extra charges added for the convenience.

Mmmm... pizza.

Personally, if a service like this were available here in the US, and I had a phone capable of taking advantage of it, I'd likely give it a shot. Thinking about trips to the grocery, dealing with crowded parking lots, people rushing through the store itself without being considerate of others, screaming children... I'd sacrifice being able to actually handle an individual item for not having to deal with that, especially if the virtual store was somewhere I had to be daily anyway. When it comes to worrying about the quality of the food, I'd guess that a business like this has to maintain a high level of quality specifically to dispel this sort of concern. In instances of human error or something else resulting in an order filled incorrectly or with food of unacceptable quality, either the business would resolve such (hopefully rare) incidents quickly, or they couldn't expect to stay in business for very long. For now, though, I have to wait. No virtual grocery here yet... and no flying cars.

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, comes out October 18! Screenshots, Trailer, Info

A new Ratchet and Clank game is set to come out October 18! I haven't played one of these games in a long time; the last time I played one, I played on the PS2... I really need to upgrade to the newer series! I can't wait to see this new game come out - if it gets great reviews, I'll get it - if not... well... I'll pretend it doesn't exist.

I really don't know about the Coop thing... Coop ruins a lot of games... except for Portal 2. Resident Evil 5 sucks... mostly because it isn't scary in the least, because of the other person that's with you at all times... It's not survival horror... it's just a multiplayer shooter... and a bad one, at that.

If they ruin Ratchet and Clank, I'll be sad... but it isn't the biggest series in my mind that was ruined... Spyro is... I loved that little guy and they turned him into an abomination in a game that is coming up... they're making some terrible new series and throwing the name Spyro in just to sell the game... Hopefully that's not the case for Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One (Even though the name is based around the 4 player Coop, even...)

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6314752/ratchet-and-clank-all-4-one-arrives-oct-18

L.A. Noire, 51 Screenshots

L.A. Noire is coming very soon, May 17, and here are a ton of screenshots from the awesome game! This game uses a new type of facial technology that captures the motion of every muscle on a real human's face and then they transfer those motions into the game for the character facial movements.

This makes everything look incredibly realistic on the faces of people, even if they don't completely look real in the end. However, I'm sure that within the next few years (the next gen of consoles and slightly better computers), video games will become incredibly realistic, no longer able to be restricted by the limitations of terrible hardware.

Anyway, here are the amazing and... huge lot of screenshots!

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/adventure/lanoire/index.html