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Submission + - How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: In this episode of War Stories, Ars Technica sat down with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner to learn about the challenges he faced while bringing his ambitious vision for the game to life. As the 1980's wound down, he found himself fighting against not only the limitations of the Apple II hardware but the impending death of the platform itself. Decades later, Prince of Persia remains a classic example of how the constraints of early gaming led to solutions that advanced the art form.

Comment The title of the Wired article is misleading (Score 3, Interesting) 35

by Jaguar777 (#56122541) Attached to: Messenger Kids Advocates Were Facebook-Funded

Halfway through the article the author says they were unable to find any bias caused by the funding.

Funding from Facebook may not have affected the feedback or research around Messenger Kids. The Facebook advisers who spoke to WIRED offered thoughtful perspectives, based on personal experience or supported by research.

The title of the article could have just as easily been "Facebook Sought Expert Review for Messenger Kids"

Comment Re:Sad to say (Score 1) 351

by Jaguar777 (#37207280) Attached to: Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers

I think you are falling for a false stereotype. Gamers are great patrons. I live in Indianapolis and Gen Con is hosted here. Every year I see stories on the local news talking about how the local businesses love the Gen Con attendees. This year I saw the owner of The Ram, a local restaurant/brew house, on the news talking about how great the business was during Gen Con and how his staff enjoyed working during the event. They wouldn't be saying that if they were all sitting around drinking water and taking up space.

Comment AAA has been great (Score 1) 11

by Jaguar777 (#28854001) Attached to: AAA Auto service; anyone used them before?

My wife and I have had AAA for a few years, and we love it. I have used it for a dead battery, a tow when my transmission died, and a flat tire with lug nuts so tight I couldn't get them off. My wife also used it when her car started to overheat. It has been well worth it. We recently went to Disney and stayed off site. Because we were AAA members we were able to get "diamond" parking right up front at every park. I can't say enough nice things about AAA.

Comment Re:BSG (Score 1) 31

by Jaguar777 (#23016008) Attached to: Battlestar Galactica
yeah, Baltar was definitely working the Jesus beard.

Did you find the brown haired woman that "rescued" Baltar to be a bit creepy?
It seemed like she was using him as a pawn so she could be in control of the group. She didn't appear to believe in him the way the followers did. I wouldn't be surprised if she was poisoning the boy, and then stopped so she could create a miracle just to set him up as the real deal.
The Courts

Vote Swapping Ruled Legal 496

Posted by kdawson from the third-parties-could-get-some-respect dept.
cayenne8 writes "During the 2000 election, some sites were set up for people across the nation to agree to swap votes, among them voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com. They were established mainly to benefit the third-party candidate Ralph Nader without throwing local elections to George Bush. The state of California threatened to prosecute these sites under criminal statues, and many of them shut down. On Monday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the vote-swap sites were legal (ruling here, PDF). The court held that '...the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected' and California's spurious threats violated the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit also said the threats violated the US Constitution's Commerce Clause.'"
Biotech

Journal Journal: Scientific tattoos 1

Journal by Otter
Blogger Carl Zimmer wondered if any of his readers had tattoos associated with their research or scientific enthusiasms. Terrifyingly, they sure do: atoms, animals, ATP, Necker cubes. The renaming of transuranium elements probably takes on new importance when you have a periodic table tattooed on your forearm!
Slashdot.org

New Dynamic Updating Discussions 100

Posted by CmdrTaco from the new-and-improved dept.
Slashdot users of the Discussion2 system now have a new 'Update' button visible on their floating control slider, as well at the end of the discussion. This button will update your page to include comments posted since the page was loaded, so now you can keep discussion pages up to date without doing a full reload. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it's a nice step that goes a long ways towards making it easier to use larger discussions while they are actively updating. If you aren't using Discussion2, you need to log in, and toggle the checkbox visible on every page. You probably need bother only if you are using Firefox 1.5 or 2.x or Safari. You can send bug reports to me if you want.
The Courts

Open WAP = Probable Cause? 466

Posted by CmdrTaco from the summon-sam-waterston dept.
RockoTDF writes "A court in texas has ruled that an open WAP is not a sufficient defense against child pornography charges, a ruling which could carry over to p2p users. In addition, it appears that an open WAP could be seen as probable cause by law enforcement."
Robotics

Submission + - Combined hovercraft and helicopter

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Have British engineer Geoff Hatton brought us the best of two worlds with his UFO-looking machine? The US military thinks so and are investing in it.

The design is sturdy (as opposed to a helicopter) and can fly high (as opposed to a hovercraft). It is based on the "Coanda Effect" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coanda_Effect ).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/tec hnology/technology.html?in_article_id=447317
Privacy

Submission + - Hacker's Case May Add to Students' Privacy Rights

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Article in Inside Higher Ed says the legal loss of a hacker in federal appeals court may result in students at public universities having MORE privacy rights. The hacker lost, but federal appeals court also said he had (generally) a right to privacy on computer in his dorm room:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/09/heck enkamp
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Embedded Appliance-Specific Platforms?

Submitted by
HaloZero
HaloZero writes: "Having just recently discovered pfSense, I am now looking for a platform to run it on. It's running currently on a 2.2GHz P4 with a gig of RAM, and that seems to be way, way too overkill for this type of application. The box itself is also huge in comparison to what I'm used to having as my 'firewall' appliance. I've done some looking into MiniITX stuff like the VIA EPIA offerings (and those seem to be the most promising), but the cases are still very large. I'd prefer a device that offers me a small case, compact flash (or an IDE port) fanless, and atleast three ethernet ports. Has anyone out there had any success with any of these small, embedded platforms? Form factors, hardware, their cases, loading media onto the device — what else should I be wary of?; that sort of thing. For the sake of argument, pfSense's hardware requirements are pretty basic; a 233MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM will do you just fine."
Editorial

Submission + - MIT Professor: Who Cares About Global Warming?

Submitted by Jomama
Jomama writes: Noted climate expert Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, writes in a recent Newsweek article that the global warming debate is irrelevant because global warming is actually a good thing that has naturally occured throughout the Earth's history. From the article:

Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature — a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Global Warning - Live With It

Submitted by belligerent0001
belligerent0001 writes: From Newsweek via http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek / we discover that alot of the Global Warming Indicators may not be what they seem. FTA "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators — and many scientists — seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare". So Greenland was once green, warmer regions produce more foods, and its the middle of April in Cleveland and there is 12 Inches of snow on the ground. 'F' the F-ing climate.

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