Steam for Mac is 100 percent official. Valve just released a statement saying it plans to launch it this April. The first games available will be Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life (and expansions), Counter Strike, and Portal. Portal 2 will be the first game released for Mac and PC simultaneously. Pretty big news, yes.

Steam will be fully native on the Mac, that is, not some rubbish emulation—it uses WebKit (“Safari”). That makes me jealous: Steam for PC uses Internet Explorer, and it gar-bage. It’s the worst part about Steam.

Valve bigwig Gabe Newell said, “As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients. The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

Welcome to Steam, Mac users! I look forward to sniping you all in Team Fortress 2 over and over again until you accuse me of using an aiming bot, the quit in a big huff. Mwahaahaa~!

I feel like I’m missing something important with this concept. It appears that the keyboard slides out from the bottom of the monitor, but there’s no way to orientate it the way a keyboard should be. I’m not crazy, right? It looks like it only comes out vertically? I guess it’s still a concept, so they’ve got some time to work it out, but man, I wouldn’t type on a vertical keyboard for all the tea in China.

See what I mean? Is there any support there?

I would have stayed to ask, but they were being cagey about their other concept products, so I left in a huff.

That NVIDIA and Intel haven’t been getting along lately isn’t big news but it looks like NVIDIA has finally gotten up from the dinner table and left the restaurant in a huff. The epicenter of the problem appears to be NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, which provides some much needed oomph to netbook and nettop platforms. Intel wants to keep a distinct separation between its low-power, low-cost Atom chips and its more-capable Pentium chips. When NVIDIA’s Ion is added to an Atom platform, the extra power makes Intel’s higher-end (and higher-cost) CPU offerings a tougher sell.

You’ll recall earlier this year that Intel announced its new “PineTrail” Atom platform, which shifts system boards from a 3-chip architecture down to a 2-chip architecture. Apparently Intel’s decided not to license the platform to NVIDIA, which means the graphics company won’t be able to integrate its Ion chipset into the new PineTrail offerings.

Naturally, NVIDIA took issue with that. According to DigiTimes:

Nvidia said in a statement “…because of Intel’s improper claims to customers and the market that we aren’t licensed to the new DMI bus, and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we’ll postpone further chipset investments for Intel DMI CPUs.”

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time that Intel and NVIDIA have been involved in licensing disagreements. Earlier this year, the two companies scuffled over whether NVIDIA was licensed to create chipsets based on Intel’s Nehalem-based products.

So that leaves AMD and VIA as possible partners, right? Well, not AMD actually, seeing as how AMD owns ATI now — NVIDIA is “halting development on AMD chipsets since the market is no longer economically viable.” VIA and NVIDIA already have a partnership in place for Ion-based systems and it’s likely that the two companies will continue the partnership for NVIDIA’s upcoming Ion 2 platform.

[DigiTimes]

There are good children’s books that tell a good story and a moral lesson while being nice about it. And then there are children’s books that tell a bad story and a dubious moral lesson while being badass about it. And I don’t mean badass in a cool way either.

The difference: Well, one I will happily place in my daughter’s decorative bookends, the other I will definitely consign to the remotest place I can find on my globe bookends. These books belong to the latter category albeit I must say that I mean no insult for the writing skills of the authors only the messages they send to the pliable minds of young children, mine included.

Hiroshima No Pika

Sure, we should teach our children about the terrors of war in general and of atomic bombs in particular. But must we do so in a manner that can permanently damage the fragile psyche of our children? Even the cover of this book – that of a topless female running through the streets filled with blood – is sufficient material for nightmares! And take note that this is meant for kindergarteners.

There is a time for our children to know about war and pre-school is not it. Maybe when they are a little older and can appreciate the difference between life and death, right and wrong, cost and benefit in a deeper way, then we can think of educating them about Hiroshima in an objective manner.

Who Cares About Disabled People?

If I were to place this book in a prominent place in my father’s brass bookends, I am sure to get a dressing-down like I have never experienced since I was a kid. You see, my Dad is a disabled man and for him to see his grandchildren reading a book with such an insane title is an incitement to a battle of words. And I have never been inclined to battle with my Dad, disabled or not.

But that’s not the main crime of this book. According to it, disabled people include children who love to eat (read: fat) and who like to huff paint, child wonders and teen athletes as well as alcoholics! The message is obvious: When you don’t fit in with the norm, you are a disabled individual. In other words, you are now officially a freak.

Maybe the authors had noble intentions but noble intentions have a way of getting lost. These books just got lost in the Sinai Desert!

With that said, I would rather stick to Dr. Seuss’ books! At least, the only frightening thing my child encounters is the Cat in the Hat and he is not even that frightening!

Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content? Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.

An abundance of free or reduced-price content would widen the appeal of the reader — I imagine many people are put off e-books by the idea that they are not getting their money’s worth. As offensive as the idea of inserting ads into a book is to me (and surely to the average reader), it’s almost certainly part of a value proposition which increases the utility of these expensive little buggers.

The wording of the patent requests also includes the language “in response to a consumer request for content,” which could probably be massaged into referring to downloaded books that have been paid for, but more easily fits streamed or dynamically generated stuff like news or Google Books content. There’s also talk of including the ad in printed versions of said content, which bothers me a bit more than the other part. At any rate, I’m convinced that advertisements are unlikely to appear in the kinds of books and publications you’re paying full price for right now, so if this is ever implemented, you’ll probably (hopefully) be able to read your Vanity Fair unmolested.

[via Slashdot and TechGeist]