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Handhelds

Submission + - Microsoft shows full 3D XNA games on Windows Phone (engadget.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go:

Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9 http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/microsofts-bringing-xna-game-studio-4-0-to-gdc-this-week-does/ ).

The two titles are The Harvest (pictured), a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks.

Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.

Engadget : http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/microsoft-shows-off-xna-games-running-on-windows-phone-full-3d/

Video: Cross platform VisualStudio gaming: http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/1186/101.97
Debian

Submission + - Is it time for a Windows or Linux server in your h (itwire.com)

Submitted by davidmwilliams
davidmwilliams writes: Increasingly today’s modern homes are gaining computing infrastructure to rival many small businesses. Just as a company should consider a server for file and print serving, backups, a web site and centralised e-mail, so too families might like to consider the same. However, what's right? Windows or Linux? Windows Home Server? Ubuntu? Let's look at the options.
Handhelds

Submission + - LG's Windows Phone 7 Series early prototype unveil (engadget.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Exclusive: LG's Windows Phone 7 Series early prototype unveiled (with video!)

Microsoft's Aaron Woodman just pulled off a little surprise here at The Engadget Show: he brought out LG's Windows Phone 7 Series pre-production prototype!

The QWERTY slider is the first branded Windows Phone 7 Series device the world's ever seen, and while the hardware and software are both obviously early, we can tell you a few things about it:

it's just a hair thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, there are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons dictated by Windows Phone 7 Series, and we noticed a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack.

Engadget : http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/27/exclusive-lgs-windows-phone-7-series-early-prototype-unveiled/
Science

Submission + - Bill Gates gives dramatic speech on.... ENERGY (ted.com)

Submitted by TEDChris
TEDChris writes: Bill Gates stunned the TED conference with his statement that if he could have one wish for the next 50 years, it would not be about computing or philanthropy... but energy. He revealed an equation demonstrating why CO2 emissions had to be brought to zero by 2050 and then unveiled a nuclear reactor design that could power the US for 200 years using existing nuclear waste.
Google

Submission + - Google Buys iPhone Search App, Kills it

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "PC World reports that Google has acquired a popular iPhone application called reMail that provides "lightning fast" full-text search of your Gmail and IMAP e-mail accounts. The app downloads copies of all your e-mail which can then be searched with various Boolean options. reMail has only been in the application store for about six months — with a free version limited to one Gmail account and a premium version which can connect to multiple accounts. "Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store," writes company founder Gabor Cselle, who will be returning to Google as a Product Manager on the Gmail team. Google isn't saying what the fate of reMail might be. Some are suggesting reMail could be integrated into Gmail search or live on in some form as a part of Android, Google's mobile platform. Another possibility is that Google may have snapped up reMail just to kill it, not because reMail was a competitor to anything Google had, but because reMail made the iPhone better or the acquisition may have more to do with keeping good search technology away from the competition, as opposed to an attempt to undercut the iPhone. "Perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town," writes Bill Ray at the Register."

Submission + - Apple dissing Adobe's (buggy?) e-book DRM for iPad (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by ericatcw
ericatcw writes: Adobe confirms that Apple isn't using its e-book DRM technology for the coming iPad, lending support to reports that Apple will use its own FairPlay DRM, which it uses to copy protect movies sold through iTunes. Adobe says Apple is trying to lock in customers to its iPad the same way Amazon is with its non-open-standard Kindle text formats and DRM. (It also says it can still deliver Flash to the iPad and iPhone, ban or no ban, through clever backdoors). But others say Adobe's DRM is neither as interoperable between e-reader devices nor as secure as promised. So where do you stand on the great Adobe-Apple battle?
Software

Are All Bugs Shallow? Questioning Linus's Law 596

Posted by kdawson from the defending-a-shibboleth dept.
root777 writes to point out a provocative blog piece by a Microsoft program manager, questioning one of the almost unquestioned tenets of open source development: that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Are they? Shawn Hernan looks at DARPA's Sardonix experiment and the Coverity static-analysis bug discovery program in open source projects to conclude that perhaps not enough eyeballs are in evidence. Is he wrong? Why? "Most members of the periphery [those outside the core developer group] do not have the necessary debugging skills ... the vast numbers of 'eyeballs' apparently do not exist. ... [C]ode review is hardly all that makes software more secure. Getting software right is very, very difficult. ... Code review alone is not sufficient. Testing is not sufficient. Tools are not sufficient. Features are not sufficient. None of the things we do in isolation are sufficient. To get software truly correct, especially to get it secure, you have to address all phases of the software development lifecycle, and integrate security into the day-to-day activities."
Apple

Submission + - Apple Bans Jailbreakers from the App Store

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Adam Mills writes in the Examiner that Apple has been cutting off access to the iTunes App Store to iPhone hackers and jailbreakers. Sherif Hashim, the iPhone developer who successfully hacked the iPhone OS 3.1.3 and unlocked the 05.12.01 baseband for iPhone 3GS and 3G devices discovered he’d been cut off and twittered that “'Your Apple ID was banned for security reasons', that’s what i get when i try to go to the app store, they must be really angry :))))" Another hacker, iH8Sn0w, who is behind the Sn0wbreeze tool, confirms that his account has also been deactivated even though iH8sn0w’s exploit had only been revealed to Dev Team, the group responsible for the PwnageTool. "It is kind of surprising that two people associated with jailbreaking have had this happen to them so soon after one another, but it’s too early to say if this is a campaign that Apple is starting up," writes Mills. "If it were to happen one thing is for sure. There would be far less iPhone’s on the streets of San Francisco and elsewhere. ""

Submission + - Meteorite contains complex organic molecules (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Previously unknown organic molecules have been discovered in a 100 kg meteorite that hit Australia in 1969, suggesting that our early Solar System contained a soup of highly complex organic chemistry long before life appeared.

Submission + - Gesture Based Computing Available Soon for PCs

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that the old model of “one human, one machine, one mouse, one screen” is passe, according to John Underkoffler, who led the team that came up with the interface that Tom Cruise’s character used in the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” and co-founded a company, Oblong Industries, to make the gesture-activated interface a reality. Underkoffler says gesture technology is already being used in Fortune 50 companies, government agencies and universities, and consumers will get the first taste of gesture-based interfaces later this year as Microsoft, Hitachi and PC makers are on the brink of rolling out game consoles, televisions and computers that use gestures to control the machines. In Underkoffler's conception of computing, the input and the output occupy the same space — unlike a conventional computer, in which the mouse and computer keyboard are separate from the screen, where the changes appear. Underkoffler recently demonstrated the interface — called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment — by pushing, pulling, and twisting vast troves of photos and forms that were on a screen in front of him, compressing and stretching as he went. In one part of his demonstration, Underkoffler reached into a series of movies, plucked out a single character from each and placed them onto a “table” together where they continued to move. “I think in five years’ time, when you buy a computer, you’ll get this.""
Idle

Steampunk Con Mixes In More Maker Fun 50

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the rebuttal-of-disposable-culture dept.
California has once again been blessed with another steampunk convention, this time to be held in Emeryville, CA on March 12-14 as the "Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition." This year's event promises to mix in much more of the DIY/maker flavor for a greater hands-on feel. Steampunk has been gaining much broader appeal in recent months with the continued growth of maker communities, and the many delightful varieties of music and literature. The con will feature, among other things, a 2 day track of 2-hour how-to, hands-on, and interactive workshops gear towards makers, DIY-ers, mad scientists, and evil geniuses. Of course, if you are an evil genius you probably don't need a workshop except as a gathering for potential test subjects.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft wins Windows XP WGA lawsuit

Submitted by Rish
Rish writes: A lawsuit that accused Microsoft of misleading consumers to download and install an update for Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) under the guise that it was critical security update has been tossed out. Last month, a federal judge refused to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would have meant anyone who owned a Windows XP PC in mid-2006 could join the case without having to hire an attorney, and on Friday the same judge dismissed the case completely.
Science

Israeli Scientists Freeze Water By Warming It 165

Posted by timothy from the you-must-become-the-frozen-water dept.
ccktech writes "As reported by NPR and Chemistry world, the journal Science has a paper by David Ehre, Etay Lavert, Meir Lahav, and Igor Lubomirsky [note: abstract online; payment required to read the full paper] of Israel's Weizmann Institute, who have figured out a way to freeze pure water by warming it up. The trick is that pure water has different freezing points depending on the electrical charge of the surface it resides on. They found out that a negatively charged surface causes water to freeze at a lower temperature than a positively charged surface. By putting water on the pyroelectric material Lithium Tantalate, which has a negative charge when cooler but a positive change when warmer; water would remain a liquid down to -17 degrees C., and then freeze when the substrate and water were warmed up and the charge changed to positive, where water freezes at -7 degrees C."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's necklace camera enters mass production (newscientist.com) 2

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: "Remember Microsoft's camera to be slung around the necks of people with Alzheimer's to help them recall where they'd been? A version will now enter mass production, thanks to a license granted to a UK firm. The camera is worn around the neck and takes an image every thirty seconds, or in response to its light sensor, accelerometer or bodyheat sensor indicating that something of interest may be happening. Until now only a few hundred had been made for research, which showed they can genuinely help people with memory problems. The new version will be marketed at Alzheimer's researchers this winter, and at consumers for "lifelogging" in 2010."
Media

Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services 366

Posted by timothy from the gradual-process-gets-noticed dept.
ericatcw writes "Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor V.I. Labs, 100% of the warez in its survey were available on RapidShare, which, according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."

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