Comment Re:Independence Day had it right... (Score 1) 409
now that is some dry humor...
New Top Tier Science Journal Announced 57
Shipud writes "The Max Planck society, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Wellcome Trust have announced their plans for a new journal for biomedical and life science research to be launched summer 2012. From the joint press release: 'The journal will employ an open and transparent peer review process in which papers will be accepted or rejected as rapidly as possible, generally with only one round of revisions, and with limited need for modifications or additional experiments. For transparency, reviewers' comments will be published anonymously.' The journal will be online-only and open access too, and they promise 'an opportunity to create a journal and article format that will exploit the potential of new technologies to allow for improved data presentation.' Especially valuable is the 'limited need for modifications or additional experiments,' especially since even Nature has recently published a scathing opinion piece about reviewers' almost reflexive demands for additional experiments from manuscript authors."
Women Remain the Ignored Audience In Gaming 432
donniebaseball23 writes "Research firm Interpret has released its new report, 'Games and Girls: Video Gaming's Ignored Audience,' which finds that while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing. Women represent 50% of the market and their usage of HD consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 is rising. 'It remains to be seen whether developers and marketers will effectively invest in understanding and exploiting the undertapped female gaming market,' said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Interpret."
Wii U Faster Than 360 Or PS3, No Blu-ray Or DVD Support 332
jdkramar was one of several readers to write with news of the Wii U hardware information that's been trickling out since E3. The new console will run a multicore IBM processor based on 45nm architecture (technology currently underpinning Watson), and will have an AMD R700 GPU chipset found in the Radeon 4000 line of video cards. Apparently it will, in fact, run Crysis. Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will use a proprietary 25GB disc format, and won't support DVD or Blu-ray playback. A spokesman said, "The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."
New Google Tool To Find Trend Correlations 76
Kilrah_il writes "In 2008 Google found correlation between seasonal flu activity and certain search term, a finding that allowed it to track flu activity better and more rapidly than previous methods. Now, Google is offering a new tool, Google Correlate, that allows researched to do the same for other trends. 'Using Correlate, you can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms whose popularity best corresponds with that real world trend.' Of course, Google reminds us that correlation does not imply causation."
Comment Towel Day (Score 1) 72
Saw some ladies laying out on towels today, glad to see it's not just the internet nerds who celebrate towel day.
Comment Re:Disappointed with the current /. crowd (Score 1) 72
I'm just disappointed that you didn't get first post, Dave.
Duke Nukem Forever Goes Gold 277
An anonymous reader writes with enthusiasm "Duke Nukem Forever has finally gone gold!"
Looks like it'll be on shelves around June 10th with a demo available for Duke Nukem First Access Club members available June 3rd. Can it really be true?
Righthaven Hit With Class Action Counterclaim 91
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Green reports that one of the website operators accused of copyright infringement by Righthaven has retaliated, hitting the Las Vegas company with a class-action counterclaim, charging that defendants in all 57 Righthaven cases in Colorado 'are victims of extortion litigation by Righthaven, which has made such extortion litigation a part of its, if not its entire, business model.' The counterclaim says Righthaven has victimized defendants by failing to send takedown notices prior to suing, by threatening to take their website domain names when that's not provided for under the federal Copyright Act, by falsely claiming it owns the copyrights at issue and by failing to investigate jurisdictional and fair use issues before suing, among other things. The claim seeks an adjudication that Righthaven's copyright infringement lawsuits amount to unfair and deceptive trade practices under Colorado law, an injunction permanently enjoining Righthaven from continuing the alleged unfair and deceptive trade practices, an unspecified financial award to the class-action plaintiffs for damages as well as their costs and attorney's fees."
Comment location location location (Score 1) 164
I'm at home on my computer.
slashdot you owe me like 20 billion dollars now btw, i know how much this stuff is worth cause i read about it on slashdot.
Old Man Murray Entry Deleted From Wikipedia 432
shoptroll writes "In what can be best described as an unfortunate interpretation of the 'notability standards' at Wikipedia, Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that the entry for Old Man Murray, once a mainstay of PC Gaming reviews and commentary, has been deleted. A sad day for gaming journalism everywhere." This is notable both because Old Man Murray was completely and totally awesome, but also because it was notable and influential on countless writers.
Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor? 465
dsginter writes "During a recent Windows 7 upgrade, I disabled the 'Recycle Bin' from appearing on the user desktop. Why? Because this allows the users to retrieve errant deletions. While this was the goal of the 'Recycle Bin' in the first place, most people (including myself) are in the good habit of keeping a tidy workspace and 'taking out the trash' when they see that it is full. For some people, their OCD meant that deleting a file was a two step process: delete the file and then empty the recycle bin. By disabling it from view, I have found that the original function is restored for the smattering of times that it is actually needed. Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor?" Going further, is there some combination of metaphor and method of use that you'd find more useful or natural?
Comment Re:No surprise (Score 1) 195
AFAIK the only games NOT playable in Steam offline (assuming your games & steam were up to date the last time you were connected to the internet with steam running) are games that have their own DRM protections that require internet even during single player. i think it was ubisoft that did this with a bunch of their games. I don't remember now, i never bothered to even look at them because of their douchebaggery.
Also steam warns you that these games use their own protection and may require an internet connection, which is good of them to do.
games that were patching during your last connection and did not finish will not run in offline mode
steam also used to require that you go into offline mode manually before starting up in offline mode, but they no longer require this. if no internet connection is found, it will automatically go into offline mode (after a warning "you are in offline mode" message)
Steve Jobs Health Worries Escalate 520
PolygamousRanchKid writes with this sad snippet from the San Francisco Chronicle: "We all know that Steve Jobs is sick. What's not known is how sick he is, and that's worrying investors of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) this morning, as well as everyone else. Jobs did have pancreatic cancer a few years ago, but he had a transplant and was able to come back to work. Last time, he gave some kind of time frame for returning to work. This time, he did not. Supposedly the National Enquirer is set to run pictures of Jobs with him looking frail and gaunt. Jobs was spotted leaving the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California, according to RadarOnline.com."
10% of IT Pros Can Access Previous Jobs' Accounts 218
dinscott writes "According to a survey that examines how IT professionals and employees view the use of policies and technologies to manage and protect users' electronic identities, the sharing of work log-ins and passwords between co-workers is a regular occurrence. It's no wonder then that half of them are concerned about insider threats to network security in their company's current infrastructure! But one of the most surprising results shows that one in 10 IT professionals admit they have accounts from previous jobs, from which they can still access systems even though they've left the organization."
