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Submission + - Epic's Tim Sweeney Rips Google And Apple In Defense Of NVIDIA's GeForce NOW (hothardware.com)

Submitted by bigwophh
bigwophh writes: As the number of publishers pulling out of NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud game streaming service continues to grow, the company has found an ally in Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, who vowed on Twitter to "wholeheartedly" support the company's efforts. He also took potshots at Apple and Google over the royalty rate each one charges on their respective app stores and expects them to go to battle as game streaming gains momentim. "Just waiting till later this year when Google is lobbying against Apple for blocking Stadia from iOS, while Google blocks GeForce NOW, xCloud, and Fortnite from Google Play, and this whole rotten structure begins collapsing in on itself," Sweeney added. It remains to be seen how things will pan out with GeForce NOW. NVIDIA maintains that "game removals will be few and far between" and that it has 1,500 additional games queued up. However, NVIDIA only has so much control over the developers willing to continue supporting the platform.
Security

Ask Slashdot: Where To Report Script Kiddies and Other System Attacks? 241

Posted by timothy from the needs-a-good-whippin' dept.
First time accepted submitter tomscott writes "So I've been using using Linux for over ten years now and I'm sure like most Linux users I've got SSH running on my box and port 22 open on my cable modem so that I can access my system no matter where I am. Over the years I've seen people try to gain access to my system but — knock on wood — I've never had a breach. What I am wondering: Is there a website where I can report these attempts and even supply the details of where the break-in attempt originated from?" The FBI is interested, but probably only if you've actually suffered a loss.
Android

Submission + - Turn Your Smartphone into a Real Tricorder! (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sensordrone Lets You Run Hundreds of Previously Impossible Sensor Apps:

Sensordrone can fit on your keychain, monitor your environment, and talk with your smartphone via Bluetooth. Sensordrone includes more sensors than anything else available, so you can run hundreds of new apps. Apps that are surprisingly useful in your daily life, fun apps, scientific apps, and more.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/453951341/sensordrone-the-6th-sense-of-your-smartphoneand-be

Submission + - Open Source eBook Kiosk for the Disconnected

Submitted by
N8F8
N8F8 writes: "The book industry is so focused on the web-connected ebook market that I haven't been able to find a SINGLE product or service that allows eBook lending for communities that aren't connected to the web all the time. Is anyone aware of a eBook kiosk system that caches eBooks locally? Or a Open Source software that would allow users to plug a USB eBook reader into a kiosk, browse through a catalog and download the eBook to the reader? Also, is anyone aware of a major book publisher or book distributor that would allow such a system or at least bulk eBook license?"
Censorship

Submission + - An HTTP Status Code for Censorship? (shkspr.mobi)

Submitted by Tryfen
Tryfen writes: UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using "HTTP 403 Forbidden" to tell users that they cannot access the site. So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user that they are being censored?

Comment Re:hey! (Score 2) 289

This is seriously, seriously wrong.

Why on earth would someone spend the effort to be a lawyer if they just get paid the same? How do you think exceptional employees would feel about carrying everyone else like that? Everyone's going to be HAPPY to be a carbon copy cog in the great machine? If everyone has the same disposable incomes... people would be fighting for the easy jobs. The unhappiness has only moved from feeling taken advantage of due to differences in wages to feeling taken advantage of due to the vast differences in job difficulty across the entire company's payroll for the same disposable income. )".

Maybe, if pay was the same, people would actually be able to focus on doing the jobs that they ENJOY, instead of feeling like they had to take a different position to afford to eat. This has the added benefit of the fact that people who are doing jobs they enjoy/care about tend to do better at those jobs and try harder, so the company better results as well. Bottom line, some people enjoy the work of lawyers, they would still go through the trouble to become lawters. Other people enjoy managing, they would still take the time to be managers. Some people enjoy being janitors, they would feel free to do that without feeling like they were missing out on a paycheck.
Education

Submission + - Udacity Announces Certification Option (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Online "digital university" Udacity has announced a partnership with Pearson VUE that enables them to offer students the option of a certified credential.
Students will only need to undertake this additional step, which will involve "a nominal fee":
"if they wish to pursue Udacitiy's "official credential and be part of [its] job placement program."
Including an extra final test overcomes one of problems faced by online education — was it really the student who's name appears on the certificate that completed the course and took the test?
Was it that student's own unaided work?
By going to a Pearson Vue testing center your identity can be checked. And by sitting a test your knowledge can be established. However, as the first round of tests for Udacity courses are only 90 minutes, with a multiple choice format and no programming they are not a substitute for the course assessment that currently takes place — and, of course, this is not the intention. The idea is that your identify is checked and the fact that you do know enough for it to be reasonable that you actually took the more difficult online exam is the rational.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - The Adventure Bundle: Old-School Adventuring in the Underground?

Submitted by gh0stnaV
gh0stnaV writes: A very young and fresh generation of old-school point-and-click adventures seems to be quietly brewing in hiding among the grass roots. Several developers have recently organized themselves into yet another bundle, dubbed the Bundle-in-a-Box. Some of the games here are already well-known, e.g. Gemini Rue (Wadjet Eye Games) or Ben There, Dan That! (Size Five Games), but there's also the newcomer The Sea Will Claim Everything (Jonas Kyratzes) as well as a couple of games for those who choose to pay above the current average. Most of the offerings come from one-man teams, as true to the indie tag as can get. The question remains, though: will this underground development model prove viable? And does the world of point-and-click belong only to heavy hitters like Double Fine? Right now, the numbers point to an affirmative on the second question, while the first one hangs in the balance.
Science

Submission + - Ask Slashdot. An online science course which makes full use of the Web?

Submitted by blubadger
blubadger writes: Having slept through chemistry at school, I'm looking to fill in the gaps in my science education by following a short online course or two. I've been searching for "Chemistry 101", "Basics of Physics", "Biology Primer", and so on. There's some high-quality stuff on offer – from Academic Earth, MIT and others – but it tends to take the form of videos of traditional university lectures. I was hoping to cut through the chit-chat and blackboards and get straight into the infographics and animations that will help me understand complex ideas. Flash and HTML5 Canvas seem wasted on videos of lectures. If the quality were high enough I would be willing to pay. Have Slashdotters seen anything that fits the bill?
Social Networks

Submission + - Online Social Networks can be Tipped by as Little as 0.8% of their Population (arxiv.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new algorithm developed by researchers at West Point seems to break new ground for viral marketing practices in online social networks. Assuming a trend or behavior that spreads in an online social network based on the classic “tipping” model from sociology (based on the work of Thomas Schelling and Mark Granovetter), the new West Point algorithm can find a set of individuals in the network that can initiate a social cascade – a progressive series of “tipping” incidents — which leads to everyone in the social network adopting the new behavior. But the real good news for viral marketers is that this set of individuals is often very small – a sample of the Friendster social network can be influenced when only 0.8% of the initial population is seeded. The trick is finding the seed set – which the West Point algorithm often does in only a few minutes. The algorithm is described at a paper to be presented later this summer at the prestigious IEEE ASONAM conference. A copy of the paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4431. Further info on this new algorithm can also be found at http://blog.netsciwestpoint.org/2012/05/30/online-social-networks-can-be-tipped-by-as-little-as-0-8-of-their-population/.
Windows

Submission + - Build your own supercomputer (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has a feature explaining how a home-brew approach can provide a usable measure of supercomputing power at a comparatively realistic price. The feature explores how it's possible to create 16-core and upward home computers with clustering, even using a hotchpotch of systems including netbooks, laptops, workstations and high-performance servers.

"Windows-based clusters can be assembled quite easily using the Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system, and Microsoft provides guidelines for creating 'cluster-aware' applications that will make use of cluster resources when run on such a system," the feature explains. "Alternatively, there are various free Linux distributions that are designed for clustering, such as openMosix and ClusterKnoppix. These provide a user-friendly experience that makes it almost effortless to set up a cluster of any size using the popular Beowulf system.""
Australia

Submission + - What is a patent troll? (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: Australian tech publication iTnews is defining ”patent trolls" as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition.

The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three US telcos’ usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world’s first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls.

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