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Submission + - Slashdot Alum Samzenpus's Fractured Veil Hits Kickstarter

Submitted by CmdrTaco
CmdrTaco writes: Long time Slashdot readers remember Samzenpus,who posted over 17,000 stories here, sadly crushing my record in the process! What you might NOT know is that he was frequently the Dungeon Master for D&D campaigns played by the original Slashdot crew, and for the last few years he has been applying these skills with fellow Slashdot editorial alum Chris DiBona to a Survival game called Fractured Veil. It's set in a post apocalyptic Hawaii with a huge world based on real map data to explore, as well as careful balance between PVP & PVE. I figured a lot of our old friends would love to help them meet their kickstarter goal and then help us build bases and murder monsters! The game is turning into something pretty great and I'm excited to see it in the wild!

Comment Re:I haven't read the article, but (Score 2) 105

by daemonc (#40575413) Attached to: School's In For Summer At Udacity

Er... are you factoring in that many of the online students may have other things that consume their time, like say... a job and family?

I know that when I was a "brick and mortar" student, I had much, much, much more free time than I do now. And I am exactly the sort of person that considers taking an online course such as this.

Comment Re:How the money could better have been spent (Score 2) 295

Or they could spend more on training and education so we don't end up with someone who is "not an expert on the technical side" running our state broadband deployment program...

This small organization has started 60 public computers, equipped with 10 computers each, loaded them with Open Source software, provided a free curriculum, and trained hundreds of computer mentors - all for 1/8 the cost of these routers...

Comment Re:Purely out of curiosity (Score 1) 692

by daemonc (#37708816) Attached to: Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?

As an admitted droid fanboy and avid user of Android's Voice Actions, I see some major differences in the video, namely: Siri talks back to you. This is something I've always found to be lacking in Voice Actions.

Continuing with your example - you only covered step 1.

Android:

  • Step 2 - Look down at the phone to verify that it interpreted what you said correctly.
  • Step 3 - Press "send", or go back and manually correct it.

Siri:

  • Step 2 - It reads the message back to you.
  • Step 3 - Say "send", or maybe you can tell Siri to correct it?

Revolutionary? Maybe not. Evolutionary improvement? Definitely.

Can't wait for Google / Android hackers to copy this. :)
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Stephenson Mentions Slashdot in Reamde (cmdrtaco.net) 1

Submitted by
CmdrTaco
CmdrTaco writes: "It's total navalgazing and I wouldn't post it if I was still working here, but I thought my heirs would be pleased to know that Slashdot got a mention in Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Be proud and keep up the fight. It's page 161 if you have the hardcover."

Comment AM/PM? (Score 1) 990

by daemonc (#37229260) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Could We Deal With the End of Time Zones?

So here on the eastern seaboard of Australia, lunchtime will now be at 2 a.m., In New York it will be 4 p.m., and in Moscow it will be 8 a.m.

Why in the world would you go through all that trouble, and still keep a.m. and p.m.?

I have never even seen anybody express UTC in anything other than 24 hour format.
Slashdot.org

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot 1521

Posted by CmdrTaco from the steve-got-front-cutsies dept.
After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.
NASA

NASA Discovers 7th Closest Star 137

Posted by CmdrTaco from the practically-in-my-back-yard dept.
Thorfinn.au says "Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. 'WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision,' said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground.'"
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-watch-channel-zero dept.
dtmos wrote in to say that "This summer, StarCraft II has become the newest bar room spectator sport. Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches. As they root for their on-screen superstars, StarCraft enthusiasts can sow confusion among regular patrons... But for sports-bar owners, StarCraft viewers represent a key new source of revenue from a demographic—self-described geeks—they hadn't attracted before."
Security

Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware 132

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-fight-the-fever dept.
wiredmikey writes "In their most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers pointed out a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years. Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threats to effectively dodge many security defenses."

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