Google whips up new search filter for recipes

Google has added a new service to its search engine that can be used to quickly find recipes online. The site's Recipe View allows you to enter queries and refine the search based on parameters such as ingredients, how long the meal takes to prepare and the amount of calories it contains. "With just a few clicks, you can customize and filter search results to show recipes with your ideal ingredients, cook time and calorie count," explains Google.

To try the service, enter a keyword in the Recipes section including specific recipe names, ingredients or even holiday and events for themed meals. For example, if you enter "chicken pasta," Google presents you with 1,070,000 results with filters for ingredients like lemon, cook times ranging from 15 to 60 minutes and various calorie counts. Recipes are also accompanied by pictures and user ratings so you know what you're getting yourself into.

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Standoffs, Protests and a Prank Call

Brian Bosma, the Republican majority leader of the Indiana House, opened the chamber?s session on Thursday, but as has been true all week, a roll call vote showed that 37 of the 40 Democrats were absent, preventing a quorum for any state business.

Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana have fled their home states to avoid voting on Republican-sponsored legislation that would strip unions of much of their authority.

?Thank you for being here,? Mr. Bosma said to the mostly Republican members present in Indiana. Just outside the door, protesters could be heard chanting loudly, ?This is our House!?

Mr. Bosma said he had spoken to B. Patrick Bauer, the minority leader, twice that morning. Mr. Bauer had given no indication, Mr. Bosma said, that he or the other Democratic lawmakers would be returning from their self-imposed exile in Urbana, Ill.

One of three Democrats present in Indianapolis on Thursday morning, Scott Pelath, who represents Michigan City, said he was listening to the protesters and was inspired by them.

?I know a lot of our members are going to have a hard time letting them down,? he said.

While Republicans insisted that the bills were required to balance state budgets, Democrats and thousands of protesters who circled and chanted outside the Capitols in Indiana and Wisconsin insisted that the legislation was an all-out attack on the middle class.

In Wisconsin, the State Assembly began final debate on Thursday on the governor?s budget legislation, which would severely limit collective bargaining for state unions. Republican leaders said they expected a vote late Thursday.

But even if the Assembly passes the bill, it will still be stalled because the Senate cannot vote on it without a quorum of 20 members. There are only 19 Republicans in the Senate, and their Democratic counterparts remained camped out in Illinois to prevent a vote. Wisconsin troopers do not have jurisdiction to order them back home.

Senate Republicans once again issued a ?call to the house? on Thursday morning, sending troopers in the hope of finding at least some of the Senate Democrats at home. But they found none, extending the crisis.

?The Senate Democrats need to come to work and do their jobs,? said Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate?s Republican majority leader. ?Ask any employer, anywhere in this state if they?d be this patient if one of their employees refused to show up for a week.?

Unions began running new advertisements against the legislation. And protesters who have been camped out at the Capitol marched around the building, chanting ?Kill the bill.? Union supporters planned rallies in at least 17 cities, and new union print advertisements joined statewide television and radio ads opposing the legislation.

In Ohio, where thousands of protesters last week had argued against a bill that would ban collective bargaining for state workers, Senate leaders agreed to change the legislation, to allow state workers the chance to negotiate wages. But the measure would now bar public employees from striking.

As the fights in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have garnered national attention, more fights were expected soon. In Oklahoma, the House is considering legislation that would ban collective bargaining with municipal unions. In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to prevent collective bargaining between teachers? unions and local school boards.

In Wisconsin, Democratic lawmakers said the state?s Republican governor, Scott Walker, was out purely to break the unions, noting that the unions had already agreed to the concessions on wages and benefits to balance the budget.

Their suspicions were increased after the publicizing of comments Mr. Walker made during what turned out to be a prank phone call from a blogger posing as a well-known conservative donor. In the call, the governor discussed tactics to trick Democrats back to the Capitol, and compared his efforts to President Ronald Reagan?s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981. ?This is our moment, this is our time to change history,? Mr. Walker said.

The caller was Ian Murphy, the editor of the New York-based Web site Buffalo Beast, posing as David Koch, who with his brother Charles leads Koch Industries, which finances libertarian causes like the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity and which helped mobilize a Tea Party demonstration in support of the governor on Saturday.

Kate Zernike reported from Madison and Susan Saulny from Indianapolis. Reporting was contributed by Steven Greenhouse and A. G. Sulzberger from Madison and Sabrina Tavernise from Columbus, Ohio.

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House Freshmen Take Plans for Cuts Home

They loved the cuts to a jet engine program. They applauded the curtailing of environmental regulators. When Mr. West, a first-term lawmaker, recounted his vote for an amendment to return unused stimulus dollars to the nation?s Treasury, the crowd erupted with delight.

Then out came the pie chart, showing the giant slice of the budget consumed by Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, untouched by lawmakers. ?We have got to make some hard choices,? Mr. West said. ?We?ve got to tackle that right now.?

The room of roughly 400 people grew silent.

House freshmen returned to their districts this week for their first extended recess, and began to lay out exactly what billions of dollars in spending cuts would really mean for the voters they believe sent them to Washington to make cuts.

Many people clearly liked what they heard. But there were also hints of the challenges to come, as voters, even in reliably conservative districts, pushed back against some of the specifics.

There was Nina Hirsch, a Democrat who supports Mr. West but dislikes cuts that hurt programs for injured veterans. And Sharon Benson, who attended a town hall meeting on Tuesday in Greeley, Colo., with Representative Cory Gardner and denounced proposed cuts to the Head Start program. Voters in Coeur d?Alene, Idaho, showed Representative Raśl Labrador loads of love on Monday night, but also fretted about education financing.

While a handful of town halls are hardly a measure of the national temperature, it is clear that the freshmen Republicans in Congress, giddy from their budget session, are getting down into the weeds with voters over cuts they seek, even as Democrats in the Senate and President Obama have vowed to reject many of them.

As they spend this week holding town hall meetings and otherwise catching up with constituents, the freshmen Republicans, having made an impact in Washington in the initial skirmishing over the budget, are in essence testing the waters at home for the tougher fights ahead. They could include a government shutdown if the House and Senate cannot agree on spending, a face-off with Democrats over raising the nation?s debt ceiling and potential fights over cuts to the entitlement programs.

?We have no money, and we need your help,? Mr. Labrador told constituents in Coeur d?Alene. ?Everyone needs to share in the responsibility, and everybody needs to share in the sacrifice we need to make to make sure that the United States stands as the beacon to the world.?

The freshmen came armed with charts. They began their presentations by detailing the $61 billion in cuts passed by the House last week in a spending measure. They emphasized their belief that debt was crippling the nation and must be dealt with swiftly.

?What part of ?We are broke? do you not understand?? Representative Jon Runyan asked during a meeting in Philadelphia, moderated by the conservative talk radio host Dom Giordano and broadcast on WPHT.

Because the House voted on dozens of amendments offered by members on the continuing resolution to finance the government for the rest of the year, constituents were able to see exactly where their representatives aligned and parted ways with fellow Republicans on spending and policy matters.

For instance, Mr. West voted to cut financing for a jet engine program supported by Republican House leaders, and to eliminate funds for public television and AmeriCorps, a volunteer organization. But he rejected a measure that would cut block grants, which he said were important to his home state.

Mr. West described in some detail his decision to reject further across-the-board cuts on top of those passed by the chamber, arguing that those cuts would amount to ?carpet bombing.?

Mr. West also defended his vote to support extension of some expiring parts of the USA Patriot Act, a move that some Tea Party members find an encroachment on personal liberties. ?The No. 1 civil liberty of the American people is your life,? Mr. West said.

In contrast, Mr. Labrador faced some criticism for voting against the act, which he said he believed violates the Fourth Amendment?s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

These differences show that while the freshmen are united in their desire to whack away at federal spending, they are not wholly unified, suggesting that they will not always vote as a bloc.

Facing very friendly audiences, the freshmen at four town hall meetings this week demonstrated candor about the cuts they seek, and were greeted with applause. But they did face unhappy voters, too.

At the meeting here, R. Sam Chaney, 22, who works with troubled teenagers through his volunteer position with AmeriCorps, gave a passionate plea for the program. ?You fired me!? Mr. Chaney said, adding that the program ?isn?t worth anything to you.?

Mr. West said the program was a good one, but should get local and private financing instead of federal tax dollars.

In Greeley, many of the concerns among the roughly 60 people at the meeting were about education. ?I get concerned hearing about throwing the baby out with the bathwater because we have the largest growing population of low-income children in the nation right here in Colorado,? said Ms. Benson, who works for Head Start. Mr. Gardner nodded, but moved on without giving her a response.

?There are tough choices to be made,? Mr. Gardner said at one point, summarizing his view. ?And I am sure that there are people in this room who aren?t pleased. But I hope that every person in this room will let us know, give us a call and talk to us about your ideas for reducing spending.?

Bill Loftus contributed reporting from Coeur d?Alene, Idaho, and Dan Frosch from Greeley, Colo.

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Standoffs, Protests and a Prank Call

Brian Bosma, the Republican majority leader of the Indiana House, opened the chamber?s session on Thursday, but as has been true all week, a roll call vote showed that 37 of the 40 Democrats were absent, preventing a quorum for any state business.

Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana have fled their home states to avoid voting on Republican-sponsored legislation that would strip unions of much of their authority.

?Thank you for being here,? Mr. Bosma said to the mostly Republican members present in Indiana. Just outside the door, protesters could be heard chanting loudly, ?This is our House!?

Mr. Bosma said he had spoken to B. Patrick Bauer, the minority leader, twice that morning. Mr. Bauer had given no indication, Mr. Bosma said, that he or the other Democratic lawmakers would be returning from their self-imposed exile in Urbana, Ill.

One of three Democrats present in Indianapolis on Thursday morning, Scott Pelath, who represents Michigan City, said he was listening to the protesters and was inspired by them.

?I know a lot of our members are going to have a hard time letting them down,? he said.

While Republicans insisted that the bills were required to balance state budgets, Democrats and thousands of protesters who circled and chanted outside the Capitols in Indiana and Wisconsin insisted that the legislation was an all-out attack on the middle class.

In Wisconsin, the State Assembly began final debate on Thursday on the governor?s budget legislation, which would severely limit collective bargaining for state unions. Republican leaders said they expected a vote late Thursday.

But even if the Assembly passes the bill, it will still be stalled because the Senate cannot vote on it without a quorum of 20 members. There are only 19 Republicans in the Senate, and their Democratic counterparts remained camped out in Illinois to prevent a vote. Wisconsin troopers do not have jurisdiction to order them back home.

Senate Republicans once again issued a ?call to the house? on Thursday morning, sending troopers in the hope of finding at least some of the Senate Democrats at home. But they found none, extending the crisis.

?The Senate Democrats need to come to work and do their jobs,? said Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate?s Republican majority leader. ?Ask any employer, anywhere in this state if they?d be this patient if one of their employees refused to show up for a week.?

Unions began running new advertisements against the legislation. And protesters who have been camped out at the Capitol marched around the building, chanting ?Kill the bill.? Union supporters planned rallies in at least 17 cities, and new union print advertisements joined statewide television and radio ads opposing the legislation.

In Ohio, where thousands of protesters last week had argued against a bill that would ban collective bargaining for state workers, Senate leaders agreed to change the legislation, to allow state workers the chance to negotiate wages. But the measure would now bar public employees from striking.

As the fights in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have garnered national attention, more fights were expected soon. In Oklahoma, the House is considering legislation that would ban collective bargaining with municipal unions. In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to prevent collective bargaining between teachers? unions and local school boards.

In Wisconsin, Democratic lawmakers said the state?s Republican governor, Scott Walker, was out purely to break the unions, noting that the unions had already agreed to the concessions on wages and benefits to balance the budget.

Their suspicions were increased after the publicizing of comments Mr. Walker made during what turned out to be a prank phone call from a blogger posing as a well-known conservative donor. In the call, the governor discussed tactics to trick Democrats back to the Capitol, and compared his efforts to President Ronald Reagan?s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981. ?This is our moment, this is our time to change history,? Mr. Walker said.

The caller was Ian Murphy, the editor of the New York-based Web site Buffalo Beast, posing as David Koch, who with his brother Charles leads Koch Industries, which finances libertarian causes like the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity and which helped mobilize a Tea Party demonstration in support of the governor on Saturday.

Kate Zernike reported from Madison and Susan Saulny from Indianapolis. Reporting was contributed by Steven Greenhouse and A. G. Sulzberger from Madison and Sabrina Tavernise from Columbus, Ohio.

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Computers Get In Touch with Your Emotions

Computers could be a lot more useful if they paid attention to how you felt. With the emergence of new tools that can measure a person's biological state, computer interfaces are starting to do exactly that: take users' feelings into account. So claim several speakers at Blur, a conference this week in Orlando, Florida, that focused on human-computer interaction.

Kay Stanney, owner of Design Interactive, an engineering and consulting firm that works with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research, says that a lot of information about a user's mental and physiological state can be measured, and that this data can help computers cater to that user's needs.

Design Interactive is prototyping Next Generation Interactive Systems, or NexIS, a system that will place biological sensors on soldiers. If a sensor detects that a soldier's pulse is weakening, or determines another problem with her physical state, the system might call for help or administer adrenaline. Similar technology could prove useful in civilian conditions, Stanney says. For example, sensors on air traffic controllers or baggage screeners could help prevent errors or poor performance, she says.

Design Interactive is working on another project called Auto-Diagnostic Adaptive Precision Training for Baggage Screeners (Screen-ADAPT), which would aid in training by using measurements including electroencephalography, eye tracking, and heart-rate monitoring to assess the performance of baggage screeners. The idea is to learn how successful screeners scan an image so others can apply similar techniques.

Stanney admits this is challenging, because not every successful baggage screener does the job in exactly the same way. "This will really come down to the art of the algorithm?what it is that we're trying to optimize," Stanney says. Sensors can already detect when a person is drowsy, distracted, overloaded, or engaged. But it would be ideal to be able to determine other states such as frustration, or even to distinguish between different types of frustration, she says.

Some companies are already applying these ideas. Mercedes, for example, has developed algorithms that watch how a driver operates the steering wheel to identify when he might be drowsy. Stanney says the approach could also make personal computers more useful. For example, a computer might eventually be able to detect when a user is overloaded and then suggest that she focus on one application.

Hans Lee, chief technical officer of EmSense, a San Francisco company  that measures users' cognitive and emotional state for the purpose of market research, says there are plenty of potential applications for a computer that can read a human's mood. "No matter what you do, emotion matters," Lee says.

Lee says studies suggest that 40 percent of people verbally abuse their computers. A device capable of recognizing a user's frustration and addressing it could make workers more efficient, and mean fewer broken monitors.  "What if your computer could apologize to you?" Lee says.

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SandForce launches SF-2100, SF-2200 SSD controllers

SSDs have come a long way in the last few years and SandForce is continuing that evolution today by introducing new controllers (PDF) that double the performance of the company's early iterations. The new SF-2100 is equipped with a SATA 3Gb/s connector while the latter uses the speedier SATA 6Gb/s interface and both processors optimized for client computing applications.

The SF-2100 offers read and write rates of up to 250MB/s while the SF-2200 peaks at 500MB/s. Both feature SandForce's "DuraClass" technology, a name that includes DuraWrite, Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements (RAISE), and AES encryption technologies. As with previous models, the latest SF chips don't require an external DRAM chip and other key features include:

  • Support for advanced 30nm- and 20nm-class NAND flash from all leading flash vendors with Asynch/ONFi1/ONFi2/Toggle interfaces with data transfer rates up to 166 Mega Transfers per second
  • Trusted Computing Group (TCG) OPAL security with 256-bit AES encryption and automatic, linerate double encryption with a drive-level password
  • Advanced ECC engine correcting up to 55 bits per 512-byte sector to assure high data integrity and support for future generations of flash memory
  • Power and performance optimization and tuning features to maximize mobile battery life

With SSDs appearing in various mainstream products and many vendors offering them as options, SSD prices are bound to fall and DRAM-less solutions will drive a hard bargain according to Gartner research director Joseph Unsworth. "SSD controllers that can deliver superior performance and reliability without the dependence on DRAM will have a compelling value proposition."

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Spotting Influencers in Big Companies

In 2009, Zachary Johnson, a junior at Northwestern University, decided to promote the pop music of a friend at Duke, Mike Posner. Through a few calls and e-mails, he identified influential students at six college campuses, then asked those students to promote Posner's music in a coördinated way on Facebook, building an extensive friend network around the artist.

If sales are any proof, Johnson's marketing worked. Posner's single "Cooler Than Me" hit number 6 on the U.S. Billboard charts in July 2010. Partly on the basis of this success, Johnson launched Syndio Social, a startup that provides consulting services to show companies how to leverage a few key individuals.

"You can do the same thing for a company that sells toilet paper as you can for an artist who sells pop music," says Johnson, who cofounded the company with a professor, Noshir Contractor, under the auspices of Northwestern University's Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. "It's possible to see who are the key connectors and culture generators in a business."

Syndio Social starts by analyzing data from sources such as e-mail and project records to build a picture of who communicates with whom in a company. Contractor says internal communications usually contain enough "digital traces" to generate an expansive picture of working relationships across a large company.

To gain a deeper understanding of work relationships within the organization, Syndio Social often relies on employee surveys and academic insights about how communication networks function. The company then maps those relationships and helps managers figure out how to use information about key influencers. It's especially useful in larger corporations, where relationships are more difficult to map.

Johnson says Syndio Social also works with companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions. "It's making sure the right folks who hold things together aren't fired in the merger," he says. "If you have a company that has three people who tie things together, even if they aren't the highest performers in numbers, you want to make sure they stay."

The company is one of several startups applying social-networking approaches to aid businesses. These new companies reflect a corporate awakening to the value of social networks, says Valdis Krebs, who has run a Orgnet.com, a consulting firm specializing in network analysis, since 1995.

Right now Syndio Social consults with clients on an individual basis, but ultimately it aims to build software that any company can use without requiring expert help.

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Hardware 19 - The Cockney Cast

Hardware 19 - The Cockney Cast

Posted on 18th Feb 2011 at 10:18 by Podcast with 6 comments

This week's bit-tech and Custom PC podcast is brought to you by Clive, Antony and Paul.

First on the agenda is the continuing Intel Sandy Bridge saga, and what motherboard manufacturers are doing to sort it out. We also comment on MSI's returns strategy, which the company announced on Wednesday.

Next we make some time to talk about the gorgeous Silverstone FT03. It's a pretty peculiar case due to its inverted design, but it's always refreshing to see manufactures taking a different approach.

Finally, Antony gives us a sneaky look at the CPU cooler group test from the latest issue of Custom PC, which went on sale at newsagents yesterday. Make sure you pick up a copy if you want to see which new CPU coolers offer the best combination of cooling and value.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition, although there's a slightly different twist on it this week. The lucky winner will be able to get their hands on a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad, which will provide the perfect tracking surface for whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Microsoft Research shows off 3D avatar, display prototype

Microsoft has taken the wraps off some of the projects currently in development within its research branch, sharing their visions on how the traditional GUIs of today and the natural user interfaces (NUI) that are being built will shape the future of computing. Among the tech demos posted online are a couple that use camera technologies to create new types of interaction experiences, including one that is soon to be introduced as part of the Xbox 360's Avatar Kinect feature.

Microsoft Research principal researcher Zhengyou Zhang demonstrated a photo realistic 3D avatar generated from 2D, high-quality video of a person and a simple 3D mesh model that can be created with Kinect. The avatar can be animated in real time complete with facial expressions, head movements and speech. Check out the video below:

The company also demonstrated a wedge lens which picks up hand movements above a surface using cameras that are mounted below the actual flat screen. The wedges are also used to transmit light back out the other way to create auto-stereoscopic images, which allows for glasses-free 3D, and can also be combined with head tracking from Kinect to determine where users are situated in front of a panel and re-render the content being displayed accordingly.

Although it's unclear how much of the stuff being done by Microsoft's research group will actually see the light of day in commercial products, it's still interesting to see the company is committed to developing newer forms of interacting with PCs. With Kinect's SDK coming soon, we imagine a lot more creative uses for the device will arise.

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Thoughts on The Arctic Cooling GCM

This isn?t really a review, and I can?t label it as such, if only because Arctic Cooling?s GCM isn?t really the type of device we usually cover. Still, when it landed in the office I just couldn?t help myself. It looked so cheap and nasty that the other guys in the office recoiled from it in melodramatic disgust. I had to write about it.

You?ve seen gizmos like the GCM before, probably. It wouldn?t be out of place on the prize rack of a fairground attraction, or in a machine at that really run-down arcade that your parents never let you go to. The packaging is emblazoned with bold claims that try to sell the GCM to you on a sheer value factor ? 80 games in 1? Wowee! ? all of which strengthens the impression that it?s going to be rubbish.

But, hey, at least it comes with its own Arctic Cooling batteries!

Of course, you can tell from the moment you turn it on and first hear those tiny, tinny speakers squeak into life that the 80 games it offers are going to be terrible; the lowest, cheapest emulations of the franchises and games that the creators feel they can get away with. You know that they?re going to be full of simplistic knock-offs at best, if they work at all.


Still, if you?re anything like me, you can?t help but hope a little. Maybe one of those games could actually be quite good, eh? Or maybe it?ll be just entertaining and cheap enough for it to be worth shoving the GCM into the bottom of your rucksack and keeping it for an absolute last resort ? those times when your DS, PSP, iPod Touch, Gameboy Color and mobile phone are all out of battery life. And your solar charger is broken. And you?ve not got a book. Then the GCM might sputter its way towards usefulness, maybe.

As soon as I picked up the GCM, however, all these ideas scuttled out of my head and it suddenly dawned on me what the others knew intuitively ? that there is no way the GCM could ever be good at anything, ever, for whatever reason. It?s too light and flimsy to even make a good paperweight, too bulky to fit into a pocket and too flimsy to feel satisfactory in your hands.

The GCM seems to sum up everything bad about mass production; vomited onto the market thoughtlessly and crudely because ? and I'm guessing this is the extent of any executive approval it might have received ? ?someone must want to buy this crap.?

And, seriously, it?s so badly made and designed that it makes broken glass look like a solid product. The sensitive Reset and Main Menu buttons are on the shoulders, right where your fingers normally rest. Even the screen rattles.


And the games? Sheesh. There are 80 of them, but they're all even worse than you might have feared ? mostly boring one-button affairs with no depth or excitement, in which bland Mii-like avatars drift floatily around boring backgrounds and respond to your button presses after a half-second delay. There are a few titles in the mix, such as the obligatory Breakout clone and Schmup, which work OK, but even they lack enough lustre or speed to encourage more than the first five-minute fiddle.

Most of the included games don?t even work, in fact. The GCM has got more bugs than an ant farm, and it crashes regularly too. One time I tried to boot up Jet Girl, one of the less obnoxious titles in the Racing Games category, but got nothing more than a 12 second loading screen followed by a burst of numbers running across the screen. A moment later the Fencing game loaded up instead. In French.

The GCM is really a joke, and its punchline must be the price. £40 for this pile of cheap, worthless trash? It?s one thing for the GCM to fulfil expectations by turning out to be a poorly built and cheaply produced pocket-toy full of games you wouldn?t play if you had to. It?s something altogether to charge such an outrageous RRP ? you could have a nice meal for two for the cost of this bloody thing!

As I predicted earlier, the GCM is indeed the type of product you?d expect to see in an oversized gumball machine outside a hairdresser in the bad part of town. No wonder this isn?t a proper review; there just isn?t a score low enough.

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