TechStuff Looks at OnLive

keeps reading a lot of books about it. I get to be sure of this town, and then I go on to become one of the most beloved characters in Western folklore. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Today we are going to have a podcast discussion about a topic that comes to us courtesy of a little Facebook feedback you And this is from Jackson who says, wondering if you guys could do a podcast about the on Live game system. Does it work? What kind of games are on it?

Is it a serious contender and the console market? Thanks? I love your podcast, Thanks Jackson, appreciate that. Um. Yeah, we've talked about on Live a couple of times before. But a lot of the discussion we had came before the the service actually launched. Yes, you s had at ces, did you not? Three three? Yeah? I heard about It was E three where I actually got my hands on it and I enjoyed the experience. Then, yeah, it was

kind of neat. The concept is that it's it's Internet streamed video games, and not the kind of video games that you usually find on the web, like you know, Bejeweled or Farmville or any of those sort of things. We're talking about the kind of video games that you see, like like the hardcore games on PC, Mac and and your your video game console systems. Yes, like Slice of Death three Assassin's Creed would be a good one, which you know, shouldn't might as well be called Slice of

Death three. I just wanted to say a Slice of Death. Slice of Death anyways, that's just making me think of a cake or death. I'll take cake alright. So um, but but yeah, this is this is a really different model for gaming because, um, for the longest time, we've been buying games for consoles or computers in which you know, you go out, you buy your cartridge or your disk or disks. In some cases um, and you pop it

into the machine. Um. In. In some of the older games, you would buy the magazine on the news stand, type the code into your machine, have it compile and you could run the game. But yeah, I mean you were actually buying something and taking it home and plugging it in. Now, of course, we have online gaming, We've had it for quite some time now, where you buy the game, you plug it into your machine, you connect to the internet, and you play with other people online. But this is

a completely different model. It's not even the same as buying a game from say Steam and downloading a team machine. In this case, the game itself is in the cloud. It's in the internet where you are not. You don't need to uh put the software on your machine at all. Um. In fact, you can run these games on PCs and max and also on a little on Live console right and then and then the console doesn't require you to go out and buy anything either. You This is all

done online. Yeah. Once you get the console, you just hook it up to your router and then you can play games. You know, you you hook it up to your router, you hook it up to your TV, and then you can play these great PC games mostly PC games on your television, and uh, it's it's really kind of an interesting concept. And here's here's the big draw

with this concept. The big draw is that the barrier to PC gaming in general is that you have to keep upgrading your machine in order to stay current with the latest games. Well, we've talked about More's laws so many times, where the processor speeds continually get faster, and in fact they are essentially doubling every months depending on upon whom you ask, and uh, game development cycles run about actually about that long to years, two to five years.

So people are developing games and they want to in order to sell the living daylights out of a game. Um, they want to take advantage of the latest hardware. They

must on the bleeding edge. Like the idea for most games, like we're talking the hardcore games again, is that if you turn all the graphics settings all the way up, you are going to need the fastest machine that's on the market in order to run it when it when the game launches, right, So you can still play the game, but you don't have to play it at you know,

you have to dial down the graphics. Most of them have settings where you can say all right, Well, my processors not as fast as the one that they recommend, so I will turn it down now. This this also extends the shelf life of those video games, right, because it means that you know, three months from now you might get the computer that can really run it at

its at its peak. Yeah. And in my personal experience, there is this uh lovely honeymoon right after you buy the computer where when you pick up the game box in your hand, you look at the system requirements. The machine that you just bought beats all those system requirements, and you take it home and you have this great experience where you get to run everything flat out. And then like a year, year and a half, two years later, you look at the box like, well, you know, I've

got the bare bones system requirements. I should be okay, and you are okay, but you can't take advantage of it. And then you get another year two years later you started looking at it like how much do I have to turn off in order to play this game? Well, see, I think you're being really ambitious with the year to a year and a half thing. For me, it felt

more like three weeks later I suddenly employ the latest games. Well, here you know, uh, those of our listeners who are long term listeners know that I am primarily a Mac person at home, although I have Windows and Linux available to me as well. Um, Mac, Mac games and PC games are a little bit different because Mac games have

a lot longer shelf life. Now PC games the the If you're a PC gamer, you know that you expect to see a game full price for I don't know, probably six to eight months really, I would say, and then before you know it, it's in the bargain bin for ten bucks. Yeah. I mean it makes sense when you think about the way the development cycles work, right because because Mac computers get updated on a very deliberate pace.

Yeah they really, it's dictated by Apple. So when you're a developer for a video game, you know that, uh, at least you have a pretty good idea that you're that the hardware is going to remain consistent on Mac for a given amount of time. Usually it's a couple of years, and really it's probably about two years between major updates. So that means that for two years your game is gonna run like new on all machines sold

after a certain date. PCs are like absolute chaos in comparison because you have multiple manufacturers, you have multiple UM chip manufacturers, so you've got you know, different processors out there. Uh, what is going to be the fastest MAC is gonna be the fastest MACK for two years. What's gonna be the fastest PC is gonna be the fastest PC for maybe a month. You know. So with that kind of of rush, then you've got the rush to keep up

in order to play games. We kind of really cut off track here, but on Live, well that the thing gets around that. Well, yeah, that's the that's the whole thing. You don't have to be with on Live. You don't have to be caught up in worrying about whether or not you have this hardware installed in your machine. You don't have to worry about the cost of the game on the shelf. Um, what you really need to do

is worry about the cost of the monthly subscription. Yeah, well two things, the monthly subscription in your monthly internet bill. That's true because one of the big things about this alright, so so online they're worrying about the equipment costs. They're worrying about making sure that their machines are going to run the latest games at the at the best possible UM levels. And then what they do is they're going to compress the video that is generated and then shoot

it to you, the customer. Yeah, that's the trick. That's how they do it. They they are compressing the video output of these games to improve the compatibility with multiple systems and to and cut down on latency issues. Yeah. So your your Mac or PC or that little console that we talked about, they have within them a decoder that will decompress the video as it comes in. Is it far Go North decode or um the Uh no, no, not that kind of decoder. I'm not that Southern anyway.

The the the device or the software will decompress this video stream so that you can view it theoretically in its full glory. And it's based in the framework of the interface. Right. So in the case of the PC and MAX software, you've got this interface that you use to access all these games, and the interface in theory will display the game at its highest possible resolution without taxing your computer because the real work is being done

in the cloud. Um, that's not always how it works out, because a lot of it depends upon your internet speed, your broadband speed, as well as how far away you are from the server center that the online server center. The further away you are in general, the poorer your uh,

your experience could be. Now poor is a given, you know, that's subjective, right For one person may say if if there's even a flicker, like even a hint of an artifact, then that the situation is terrible and dire and you should never do it and you should just get it. You should just spend all the money for a gaming

PC or a console and stick with that. Other people would say, you know what, I'm playing for the experience, and an artifactor to every now and then because of internet speeds or whatever isn't gonna bother me, and they wouldn't call it poor at all. So your your mileage

may vary, is what I'm getting around to here right now. UM, when you were talking about artifact basically, UM, if you've watched digital video, UM, I find it true for DVRs especially UH and something is moving very quickly on screen for example. I'm just saying this as an example, UM, but you might see blocky things look blocky or pixelated. That's essentially what we're talking about. We're talking about artifacts right, that the you would have problems with the images. They

wouldn't look smooth and crisp. It would look uh, there might be some lag time on on the screen. And by latency too, I realized I hadn't explained what that means. Um. That has to do with your connection, whether or not you're making a a fast connection with the servers, if the packets of data are being held up on one or more of the servers along the route between you and the game center. That's what we're talking about latency.

So um by by compressing the video in the games, basically, they're hoping that there will be fewer problems seeing the video. The video will look smooth and you won't have a lot of issues with the speed of the information because a lot of these games that they're they're talking about talking about Assassin's creed Um, these are games where being behind by just a little bit is going to hamper your ability to play the game significantly. Yeah. I've read

reviews and I have played some online games. I played the I played the the PC based ones. Actually I think it was a MAC based one was about an E three. Uh, they had several stations open and I got to try a couple of the things out. Um, the lag issue is one that can initially be a little irritating. And lag, of course as when we're talking about the time between when you tell the computer to do something and the time it actually does it. So let's say you hit that jump button and there's a

very short lag. I mean usually the lag is we're talking less than a second in most cases. Um. Even so we can perceive that that less than a second is easily perceptible, and it can throw you off at first. But a lot of the reviews I've read have said that once you get used to it, it's really not that bad, Like you start to adjust for it without even thinking about it, So the gameplay doesn't really suffer

after at least after you've gotten acclimated to it. So you can still have a really good gaming session despite the fact that there may be a tiny bit of lag involved. Um. And I mean I've even played console games where controls did not see incredibly responsive. So this is not limited to just the cloud. We actually see this on native machines sometimes as well, But it's one of those things people worry about. Also, you mentioned the

subscription there there are actually two different models on Live. Uh. They call it the play pack plan. Because play pack plan, it's gonna be impossible for me to say that it is too many ps and els. Okay, so play pack plan and the play pass plan, and these two plans are one of those subscription based is the play pack where it's nine dollars a month to play any of

the games that are within that play pack library. Yes, and and I should also hasten to add that that will not be all the games that are actually on on Live. It's just gonna be the ones that are available in that library. And that's pricing licensing problems there. I would imagine that's the big issue because you know, keep in mind Online is not making these games, they're just making these games available, and they have to license these games from the other companies. So you've got that one.

So you've got the subscription based service nine dollars nine nine cents for all you can Eat, But it's from like it's kind of like a restaurant all you can eat, where the buffet does not have everything that's on the menu, but you can eat everything that's in the buffet for as much as you want for as long as you're there until they throw you out. Now I'm hungry, you've been have full hour the the Hey, that's a classic

comedy routine. The play pass plan is where you purchase games and you usually you can purchase them for a given amount of time, so three day pass or a five day pass, or you can outright purchase the game so that every time you lug into your online account, you have access to that game. And you may wonder, why get a three day pass or a five day pass. There are a lot of games out there that have a RelA atively short uh a short session involved in

in completing the game. It doesn't mean that the game is bad, it doesn't mean the game is not fun, but you can you can get through it within you know, ten hour gaming session. Yeah. So let's say that you get a long weekend coming up. You may want a three day pass to play through that one game and just have that experience. And you know it's not going to take you all weekend to do it, so there's no point in and you know, you know, like maybe there's not a lot of replay values to that game,

so you know, I'll just do this three days. Like renting a game, um for others, like you know, really really in depth games, you may want a full purchase so that you can play it whenever you like. Yeah, yeah, well it sort of depends on the games to what the shorter games the story arcs versus you know, and on something like a World of Warcraft which is not available. But there are first person shooters that are and first person shooters are are some of those games, like especially

the ones I have online play elements to them. You can continually play. There's no end to the game. Yeah, you may want to you know, maybe a slow afternoon and you're like, I want to jump online and and you know, snipe some people. So that might be a

full purchase. So yeah, they've got these these two different plans, and not all the games are going to be available on each plan, so you're gonna have some overlap where games are gonna be available under either and then you're gonna have some games that are gonna be unique to one plan or the other. So you've got a shop carefully.

Uh speaking of games, um, the last I read, there was something like forty titles available, So that doesn't you know, it doesn't sound like a whole lot I mean, you've got game systems that launched with fewer titles than that, But then on Live has been around for a little while at least in the PC and Mac. Uh iterations. Yeah,

I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, if you think about it, though, if you compare it to consoles, for example, you know, the we the three sixty, the Xbox three sixty, or the PlayStation three, I would think of these sort of his launch titles for a new console system, like it's sort of proving that it works.

And I have the feeling that as more people sign up to the services, that as marketing takes hold and more people understand what online is, and uh, they get some more reviews in it about because the reviews I've read have been generally positive. Um, I think I think there may be more titles added to it in the future, you know, and they plan on it. They say that there are a lot more titles coming already. But um,

and you make a good point. I mean, forty games that launch, especially if if you're looking at the consoles, specifically the console online console that just launched out as of the recording of this podcast, Um, I mean forty titles is is great, especially when you look at some of the titles. I mean there there's some big name titles in there. There are, um whereas when you look at some of the consoles when they launched, sometimes sometimes

they launched with fewer than twenty titles. And so you know, you you buy into it with the knowledge that for a little while at least, you're gonna your options are limited. However, being said, a lot of those reviews that said positive things about Online came with a lot of qualifications. Yeah. Uh. For example, it depends very heavily upon the speed of your your broadband access. That's true, and we have mentioned

many times in this podcast that, uh speeds are relative. Um, the United States is not a country with the fastest broadband speeds in the world. Actually have some figures are yeah. Um. According to it depends upon which experts or which which company you you look at to see what the average speed is. Yeah, and speed we're talking about megabits per

second here. Uh. Now Online suggests that to play the really intense games, the ones that are really graphic intensively, you know, Assassin's Creed, that kind of thing, you want five megabits per second downstream? Yeah. Uh that's pretty fast. That's faster than my internet access. But then I don't use my internet access to do online gaming. True for me, I could upgrade to a faster service if I wanted to,

I just don't need it. So, according to net Index, the average megabets per second speed in the United States, I can't believe this is true. It's ten point oh seven. Now at the beginning of two thousands, yes, ten point oh seven. The information I've seen from other three point nine. That was the beginning of the big the average was three point nine eight. But according to now this still has the United States ranking thirty second worldwide as far

as speeds go. And I think the reason why that number is so high is because you do have a few select markets that have insane data transfer rates, like in the fifty megabits per second range. So we're in some places megabets per second, which are that's throwing off the average because I can tell you that I've never seen a speed faster than three megabits per second. Yeah, and I just get that, I just get three that Yeah, that's my maximum. I've never gotten that high, right, I've

never even gotten to three. My my tests tend to be actually tends to be like one point five. But there's some regions that get really fast service. Now, that was net Index saying ten point oh seven. Uh, speed test dot net is slightly different, but not by a

whole lot nine point eight nine megabits per second. I'm living in the wrong neighborhood using the wrong I s P. Yeah, and well, while the net Index has the United States at the thirty second ranked globally, um speed Test has US at thirty three, so we actually drop a place in that one the top. Do you want to take a wild stab at what the top nation is as far as as data transfer rates? Iceland, No, darn would have to be South Korea. Then there you go. That's

it South Korea. I know Iceland is as pretty fast broadband too, but yeah, yeah, I mean Latvia is up there. So Latvia is smaller than the United States. That is true, Chris, thank you for that input. So South Korea, Yeah, that's that is also true. So at any rate we're talking about these these uh, you know, you have to have about five megabits per second to have a really good experience on online, and according to these figures, there are plenty of laces of the United States that do have these.

It's not US, but some people apparently do. Uh So if you do have that high speed broadband and and it's it's you know, reliable at at those speeds, like you you reliably get five megabits per second downstream or better, then this might be a good approach for you. Um yeah. I also I think it's interesting when you sign up for an account with on live um. There's no fee to sign up for an account, and in fact there's

no contract. So once you sign up for account, then you you choose one of these monthly plans or you know, for a for a play pass for a few days. Um. So you know, it's it's worth trying if you have un um an account or a fast enough internet account to do that. Now, they're not the only game in town, although they have recently secured a patent which was filed UM I guess about well actually eight years ago now as of when we recording this, it was filed on

December tenth, two thousand two. Um So you know, they they do have a patented process, but there are other people who are seeking a piece of this, uh pie. Yeah, And it's understandable. I mean again, you're there's there's a real appeal here when you don't have to worry about upgrading your equipment and someone else is doing all that for you and all you have to do is have a machine capable of running the interface and that's it, plus you know, controllers or whatever. But we're talking about

you know, their basic equipment. Um, I mean that's really enticing. So yeah, they're obviously a lot of other companies are gonna want to get into it. And uh and not only that, but Online is actually looking into expanding into other services that other companies are currently providing. Yeah, because when you think about it, um, streaming video. Most of the game in this case, that the game that we're talking about was um, you know, compressing the video of

the game. So let's see what other services stream video computer or a TV. Yeah. Uh so for services like Apple TV, Hulu, um, Netflix, all these different services that stream video to devices, computers, handheld devices, all that kind of stuff. Online is taking aim at them, and they're planning on delivering video services to customer is as well. So you know, they're they're looking beyond just the games.

It's kind of interesting. I'm wondering how many of the video services are looking into getting into games, like do it the other way around? Well, of course Netflix is available now on the major three current generation consoles, you know, the Xbox three, delivering video not not video games, right right, So it doesn't seem like it would be a terrible

stretch for them to be too. They've already got um the relationships with the console provider, so it seems somewhat logical that they might be interested in doing that since they've already got an in row to the game consoles and they don't have to develop their own their own hardware. Is online has Yeah, I don't know that. I think I think it's a lot easier to make the transition from video games to video than it is the other

way around. Oh, I agree with So I'm just saying that Netflix has a relationship in place already and I and and that may be an attractive outlet for them. Of course, there are game rental companies already out there, so they might be looking for an opportunity to um move into the streaming business themselves on all fronts. It's funny how a long time ago we had phone companies and cable companies, um, you know, and they all did different things, and now all of them are encroaching on

each other's turf. And it seems like this is the same kind of thing that's going on here, where you have a company doing something it seems like it may not necessarily be in competition with another, and then you know, suddenly they are a player in the market. Now, we talked a bit about how you know, your devices don't need to be state of the art to be able to run this kind of a software and access uh these games, which uh, I mean, that's my favorite thing.

That's why I got out of PC gaming, right because I got tired of having to worry about updating my machine and I went to console gaming because all the updates were firmware updates. You didn't have to necessarily worry about getting your hardware updated until they came out with a new console and then you'd be like, all right, well, I'll go and get one of those. Did you see what the processor is inside on Live's micro console? Actually I did not write that down. What is the processor?

And it's the Marvel Armada really and it's underclocked underclock. Yeah. The reason for underclocking this processor was that uh, the on Live said, we don't need a powerful processor, so we went with a an affordable processor, and we underclocked it so it would generate less heat. So that way we didn't need to include a fan inside the micro console. So it cut down on the size of the micro

console even more. And this thing is pretty tiny. I mean it's it's um around the size of like cell phones, some smartphones rather um and it's bye bye really cutting costs, cutting the bones down whatever. You don't have to worry about having a bulky system. You don't have to worry about making noise because there's no real moving parts there. Um.

So that that also can be really attractive to gamers. Um. Although I should stress that unlike the software that you can get for your PC or mac, the console is not free. It's to purchase. Yeah, good to know. It's it's certainly important to consider when you're making that that leap.

If you don't have a computer of your own, and we're thinking that you just get the console, or you want to play on a big screen, you know, and you don't have your computer hooked up to your television, then this is uh, you know, this is and and it also comes with a custom controller that actually kind of seems to be like a hybrid of the Xbox three sixty and PlayStation three controllers. The the other element I would mention about this is that, I mean, it's

it's the micro console's brand new. So there are only a few review is as of the time that we're recording this podcast, but most of the reviews I've seen of that have been really positive, including reviews of the controller, they say, that's really solid. So, I mean, that's it's a really interesting approach, and when you compare it against

the prices of consoles, it's definitely attractive. Hundred dollars is not much when you compare it to other consoles on the market, and it's certainly uh, you know, paying month to stream games library, right versus the cost of buying a new game that you're going to play for you know somewhere between twenty and sixty hours. That's something that you you would solve, you know where you go, well,

I've played through the game. Now. You know a lot of people I've seen brag on how quickly they can solve a game, and I'm thinking, and you just dropped sixty bucks on that thing and you've solved it in twenty four hours. Their parents drop sixty bucks on that. Yeah, it's probably true, but but you know, yeah, I mean it seems like it's a worthwhile investment. If this is if you're a rabid gamer and you really burn through titles like this, it's you know, it's certainly worth the cost.

And if you're a three sixty gamer, then you look at this and you think, wait a minute. So for for nine dollars and nine cents a month, I can play unlimited games and uh that are within this library. Keeping in mind that unlimited within the within the realm of that library of games, um, and I don't have to worry about extra costs. Well with the Xbox three sixty.

And not only do you have to pay for the games, you have to pay for the online online subscription if you want to be able to do all all the

stuff that's on there right right. The thing is, though, you're making a trade off if if the the video part of the experience, if you're really interested in an immersive high definition experience where you've you really enjoy the lush graphics and the you know, billions of polygons, um this may not be This may not be the service for you because it's not the graphics on the online

the play is the issue. Yeah, yeah, so I mean that's it'll be interesting to see if this model really takes off, and if it does, it will also be interesting to see what the traditional video game consoles due to in response to it. If anything. Yeah, I mean, the the marketing distribution camps are certainly going to be

affected by this. I mean, if this becomes the norm, Uh, companies that sell video games, retailers will certainly take a hit from that, and I would wouldn't be surprised to see some pressure coming from them on the video game manufacturers. And remember thinking specifically like the embargo on streaming video on Netflix, where you can buy a DVD the day it's released versus you know, having to wait, you know,

for a while before it comes out on Netflix. You may see something like that, while you can buy the game now or you can wait thirty days or sixty days and then play it on that But I would imagine that online would have real trouble getting first party titles. Indeed, so anything that was made from Microsoft Studios, for example, it may be really challenging for Online to get that on their system, and anything made directly by Sony or

Nintendo would also be difficult. I was going to say, you probably will not see Mario on Online or Sonic to be fair. Where also, we really should you know, specify we're mostly talking about PC games anyway, so it's not like it's the console ones. But these companies console or make PC versions of a lot of the games. So like, for example, Halo games are available on PC

as well as on on the Xbox three sixty. Well, I would imagine that you would not see that become available on on Live because Microsoft has uh ownership of that. I p right, And I would argue too that with a console. With them offering a console, they're going they're interested in the console market as well. So they're probably they're probably I think they're interested in the console market. But but I think the games P see like, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's going to always be

the PC version of whatever the game is, Okay. I I had just seen that as sort of a characteristic of the initial launch releases, and I sort of assumed that they might branch out into as many different kinds of games as they could. I'm sure that is the case. I just I don't know that they actually have. Like I think there would be a whole new host of problems if they were to try and do actual Xbox, PlayStation three and Nintendo games, right, because then you have

to worry about not just the software but the hardware. Yeah, whereas if they're talking about just games that run on computers, that part's not that's not an issue, right, So it's a fair point. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. I really hope that, um, that it does well. I've you know, I signed up for it immediately as soon as it was available, but I have not had a chance to take advantage of it because I am not one of those people with the five megabits per

second downstream data transfer rate. So um, I just get to look at other people and feel envy. So thanks, um, but that thanks is not directed at anyone in particular. If I really wanted to, I could change that situation, but I just haven't done that. Yeah, when it was announced, that was a little skeptical about it, and uh, well it has gotten you know, they made a release, they

have gotten some acclaim. It looks like they are getting some customers, so it could definite reasons to be skeptical because I mean there was a certain I mean I almost a ghost, but maybe a certain phantom that that loomed over the whole idea of accessing video games via the Internet on a console that left left a sour

taste in our tech emouves. Um. Yeah, obviously, uh to those of us who've been around the video game world for a while, the phantom console is the item to which Jonathan would be referring if there ever had been an actual phantom console and not just a prototype. Um. So yeah, the idea itself is not is a variant of that. But yeah, I mean it's some it's out. It's out for six months now as at the time

we're recording it's actually seven I guess now. Um, so it looks like it will be here to stay at least for a little while and may inspire some competition and a new model of of electronic gaming. So yeah, I don't see a reason why not to try this, at least on a PC or Mac, because you don't have an initial investment. You can just play based on subscription, and if the service ultimately doesn't work, out. You aren't out that the price of that console right like that.

That's the other big fear is that if the service does go under and you the micro console, that micro console has now a paper weight. That's true, a very small paper weight, but a paper weight on the less Um, yeah, they My issues are are also the bandwidth. They don't have a connection fast enough to run it. Uh and um, the fact that the games that are out now are

really different from what I'm interested in. I'm more into strategy and simulation than there are not a lot of those on online, So you'll be looking at things like Sieve five. Yes, I would be you know which that would be, Like it's been so long since I've really updated my PCs that that would be something I'd be interested in because I feel like I want to play that game, but I'm not really sure my computer can handle it. It would certainly be a good way to

try out games. Oh sure. Yeah, and they've got online does have a lot of ways where you can do a demo game. Most of the games have a thirty minute demo version that you can play for free. Well, I think that's a good discussion on on Live. I mean, you know, like I said, we talked about before it launched and thought it was a pretty interesting idea, and in my opinion has remained that it is an interesting idea. Maybe once my broadband gets um sufficient, I will actually

get to change go from idea to uh to enact. Yes, you know, but we'll have to wait. So if any of you have any experiences with on live that you'd like to share, or perhaps you have a suggestion for a topic, or you have any questions, you can let us know on Facebook and Twitter are handle there is tech stuff h s W or you can send us an email that dress is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For moral nos and thousands of

other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. So learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works I Fine app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you