The Deceitful "Bait-and-Switch" Tactics of Auto Dealership Prize Giveaways

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I receive unsolicited prize giveaways in the mail all the time, mostly from regional auto dealerships trying to promote their inventory and overstock. The tactics used to entice the recipient into reading and reacting to the send-out can be both entertaining and aggressive. The goal of these mailings is naturally to maximize consumer response and get as many people as possible through the doors to sell them vehicles. For this reason, everybody wins!

Some dealership promotions come enclosed in very important looking "NextDay Verified Fast-Tracked Mail" envelopes designed to mimic actual overnight services while still being sent regular media mail (complete with handwritten jargon about there being crucial documents inside.) Others come with a generic key that must be checked against a lock box at the dealership.  Almost all of them include some variant of a scratch-off or pull-tab ticket with some fantastic prizes on the table. Read Full Article

Fix for Xbox One Wireless Adapter Not Working in Windows 10 - XBOX ACC Driver

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When I received the new Oculus Rift last month, one of the bundled accessories was a wireless Xbox One controller with a wireless USB adapter. Curiously, despite my system being completely up-to-date, the plug-and-play driver installation was never able to succeed correctly. I have seen similar issues pop up occasionally on Facebook and other discussion groups.

The official Microsoft support link on troubleshooting the wireless adapter suggest a wide range of potential solutions, none-of-which helped in my situation. At the end of the first solution that most closely matched my issue ("The adapter didn't auto-install"), Microsoft tells the reader to attempt the uninstall/update process once more and "if this doesn't work, your adapter needs to be replaced." Luckily that isn't really the case and the fix only takes a moment to apply. Read Full Article

Apple Muncher Project Postmortem: Developing for Panasonic VIERA Connect SmartTV (Part 3)

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This is the third of a four-part story documenting my somewhat excruciating and wholly uncharted experience developing an indie game for Panasonic’s obscure VIERA Connect television app market several years ago.

In the first part of this postmortem, I detailed the pains of becoming a VIERA Connect third party developer and struggles of setting up the rigid development environment required by Panasonic. Read Full Article

Fully Automated Image Processing for eBay

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When I list items for sale on eBay, I use a custom-developed HTML template with the item's pictures uploaded externally and embedded into the description for more visual appeal than what eBay provides. This allows me to apply custom styles to the images via CSS, provide descriptive content below specific images and generally offers a lot more flexibility and professionalism.

By default, eBay allows you to upload up to 12 images for free to be included in the ad, and requires uploading at least one image through their service to be displayed in the auction results and so forth. The images uploaded in this manner appear at the very top of the auction page alongside the auction metadata. These eBay-hosted pictures are scaled to 500x375px regardless of the user's screen resolution, with an option to view larger versions by clicking/hovering over them. Read Full Article

Windows XP Drivers for NVIDIA Geforce GTX 970, 980, 980 TI and Titan X, say what?!

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I recently built a new computer to better accommodate the forthcoming line of resource-intensive tech products, namely the Oculus Rift and related VR devices. While my old computer was nothing to shake a stick at, its hardware was not satisfactory enough to produce a consistently smooth experience on the Developer Kit 2 (DK2). The second iteration of the developer headset kit requires rendering a 1920x1080 display (960x1080 per eye) 75 times per second or else latency and lag lead to a jittery and nauseating experience. When the consumer version drops next year the hardware demands will be even greater.

With my latest PC upgrade (Geforce GTX 980 TI, MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard with an Intel i7 4790k CPU, 32GB RAM, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Sound Blaster Zx) I made the sudden, albeit fully expected observation—none of these new components provided any Windows XP support by the manufacturers. After all, Microsoft itself ceased mainstream support for XP way back in 2009 and officially declared it to be 'end of life' and fully unsupported in April 2014.  It makes zero sense for any manufacturers to waste additional developer resources maintaining support for such an archaic and unsupported operating system, even as millions of diehards still cling on. Read Full Article