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Dude. This is hilarious. Even *I* don’t drive this badly in the game.

Hours after starting to play Halo: Reach for the first time, I was still at it. I began to become a little freaked out when the computer player started driving around. He was doing nothing other than going in circles.

I’m starting to think I should show him what the words friendly and fire mean when put together. At least I have an excuse for driving like an idiot!

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Halo: Reach – How NOT To Drive a Warthog

YamazaruNinja asked the Lockergnome community whether we tend to tend to speed when driving down an open stretch of highway. I like to think that I never do this – thanks to Cruise Control. I admit that back in the day before I had such a luxury on my cars, I always ended up going too fast at times. I think everyone I know had this problem at some point. You’re cruising along and totally lose track of how fast you’re going. After all… it doesn’t FEEL like you’re speeding, right? You don’t even realize it until it’s too late sometimes.

This is just another small way in which technology advancements have enriched our lives. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps something such as Cruise Control isn’t such a big deal. When you realize that it could save lives by helping us to slow down, it puts it in a whole new perspective.

So how about it? Do you tend to speed when you’re out on the highway, or do you pay attention and drive within the speed limit?

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Are You a Speed Demon?

According to a new study, it’s not teens who text the most while driving. The guilty parties, actually, are adults. The Pew Research Center says that of those adults polled, 47 percent of respondents admit they either send or read messages while at the wheel of a vehicle.

Amongst teens aged 16 and 17, only about 34% tend to text while driving. Pew’s senior researcher, Mary Madden, said “There’s been a lot of focus on young drivers, and for good reasons. But this research provides an important reminder that adults are setting a bad example.” Several states already have a ban on texting while driving, and seven have banned the use of cell phones altogether while driving. However, the U.S. Senate is voting right now on banning texting nationwide.

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Who Texts While Driving?

It’s easy to spot a computer user of a certain age. Anybody who grew up using PCs in the ’80s or early ’90s will usually have one tell-tale-sign: an over-developed wrist reflex brought on from years of floppy disk swapping!

The news that Sony was finally ceasing production of 3.5” floppy disks has saddened a few nostalgic fans who’ve grown a warm affinity for these small pieces of plastic over the last three decades.
Apple was the first company to do away with floppy drives on their machines. As early as 1998, the iMac system shipped with no drive, a move which provided much abuse from the technology press. Macworld magazine called the decision unforgivable at the time:

…the most shocking part of the iMac isn’t what it offers, but what it lacks. The iMac has no floppy drive, which might be forgivable if there were a Zip drive or other removable-media option, but there isn’t.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. The years that followed proved Apple right, and it’s become increasingly rare to see any PCs or laptops shipping with floppy disk drives in the last decade.

Some news reports claimed that Sony was the final floppy manufacturer. This information is not exactly true though, companies such as Verbatim, Maxell and 3M are still making them. But who is using these low-capacity ’80s relics in the 21st century?

Quite a lot of people apparently! British magnetic media company Verbatim have told the BBC they still sell hundreds of thousands of them in the UK alone, with millions more shipping every year across Europe.

Many modern systems still provide firmware for booting from a floppy disk, and many users keep a USB drive and disk on standby in case of emergencies. Windows XP still requires a floppy to install many third-party RAID and SATA drives if the boot CD has not been slipstreamed to include the drivers.

The increased interest in “retro computing” in recent years could account for steady floppy sales. There are even high-street magazines dedicated to covering classic computers and consoles of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Retro Gamer. Old-school is big business at the moment.

Of course, there are pieces of technology that used floppy drives to store data, outside of the PC realm. Older music productions units are still in use across music studios around the world, samplers and keyboards often used floppy disks to store data, some scientific kit such as oscillators also still use them.

It may just be a lot of average non-tech enthusiasts who are still using older PCs on a daily basis, which still function just fine and they have no cause to upgrade.

Do you still have any uses for floppy disks? Have you bought a new batch of them recently?

The Floppy Disk is Not Dead

Been getting tons of inquiries for Solid-state Drive (SSD) coupons. Haven’t been able to find any specific coupons, but I have put together a list of available SSD drives (and their prices) at Buy, TigerDirect, OnSale, Dell Small Business, ZipZoomFly, TechLoops, Mwave, Walmart & Geeks.

Just how fast is an SSD drive? Here’s a live demonstration of one of the new Samsung SSDs (now available on NewEgg):

Told ya.

Granted, not all SSD drives were created alike. Just because it’s an SSD doesn’t mean it’s going to be super fast (or super efficient). Check into the specs and watch your budget – get as much as you can afford. That’s a good rule of thumb when it comes to these things.

Would I ever go back to a traditional hard disk? Hell no.

SSD Drive Deals

Someone who goes by the handle “Wet Pixels” sent me this image today. I had to do a double-take. Seems he’s designed the world’s first (and likely only) Chris Pirillo Flash Drive. Not sure how practical it is, or if it’d work in real life – but dang, it certainly looks better than 90% of the USB flash drives I’ve seen.

Chris Pirillo USB Flash Drive

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With the Technological advances being made every day, what do you think the future holds for automobiles? Where, and how, do you see yourself “driving” twenty years from now? With the gas prices being so insanely high right now, it naturally led to a discussion as to what changes will be made to our travel habits.


The folks in my chat room and I were discussing this, and we came up with a few ideas as to what we think the future of automobiles is or should be.

• No wheels!This is a given. Eventually, we’ll be flying around. It won’t happen soon, no. But at some point, it will be far more efficient to not use wheels, and to fly instead.
• Renewable Energy! That’s a given, again. I’d personally rather see more cars running off of electricity, rather than fuel or hydrogen. Electricity is all around, and is much better than destroying the Earth. Is that to say electric cars would be better or safer? I don’t know. But I know our planet would be much happier if we were running our vehicles this way.
• Free content. I have XM radio in my car, and I love my subscription. But at some point, it becomes silly to pay for services like this. If cars came equipped with Internet service, you could have an unlimited world out there as far as music and entertainment goes.
• Full Heads-up Display Right now, it’s really inefficient how our dashboards are laid out. The instruments should be embedded somehow invisibly within the windshield. This would help with night vision, and help you see objects like deer better.
• Automated Driving Wouldn’t it be great to punch in where you’re going, then just sit back and relax? Let the car do the actual driving! I can’t wait for that day, personally.

I’m pretty sure all of these things are coming. Will it happen in our lifetime? I don’t know, honestly. But isn’t it fun to think about? What do you think is in store for the future of automobiles?


Check out these automobile-related deals!

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What will Cars of Tomorrow be Like?