Qalthos - Slashdot User

Achron — an RTS With Time Travel 141

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @01:25PM from the flux-capacitor-not-required dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As much as I'm looking forward to StarCraft 2, there's a new RTS gaming tech that has me even more enthused. The Escapist Magazine has posted interviews and footage of the upcoming 'meta-time strategy game' Achron, which was announced at GDC earlier this year. It's a multiplayer RTS where you can send things through time. The official site has some gameplay footage as well, and it looks like their tech is useful outside of gaming."

Comment Re:Sure, but... (Score 1) 404

by Qalthos on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @09:36AM (#29185677) Attached to: One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras

Did you even read the post you're replying to?

Comment Re:Reference library (Score 1) 216

by Qalthos on Thursday August 13, 2009 @03:48PM (#29056495) Attached to: Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA

Presuming, of course that you took complete, relevant notes on all concepts, including those which seemed obvious to you at the time but which you can't quite remember how they worked now.

But, I mean, surely everyone does that, right?

Comment Re:That's funny (Score 1) 749

by Qalthos on Thursday July 30, 2009 @04:21PM (#28887405) Attached to: RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever"

I would argue that scratches, etc. on physical media are visible and (more importantly) user-created in most cases. The buyer accepts the fact that their CD/record/what-have-you can get scratched/broken/sat on and takes responsibility for its care in that area. Digital files, on the other hand have no such drawbacks and if they become unavailable, it is by no action of the buyer nor can the buyer tell what has happened. The music simply no longer works.

If, by contrast, I bought a CD which was designed to erase itself after an undetermined period of time, then yes, I would demand a replacement.

Sophos Releases Klingon Language Version 94

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 18, 2009 @04:55PM from the a-for-effort dept.

Bantu1 writes to mention an attention grab by anti-virus company Sophos, which is now offering a Klingon language version of their popular anti-virus software. Now Qo'nos too can be completely safe from the storm. If only we could see a Sophos logo in the next Paramount endeavor, the cycle would be complete.

Ballmer, IBM Surprised By Oracle-Sun Deal 324

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @12:21PM from the i-didn't-see-it-coming dept.

Geon Lasli writes "Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle's deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: 'I need to think about it. I am very surprised.' According to a source, IBM hadn't given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle's move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal."

Bethesda Announces New Fallout Game For 2010 254

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @05:37AM from the back-for-more dept.

On Monday Bethesda announced a new title in the popular Fallout series called New Vegas, set for release sometime in 2010. It's planned for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. They said it wasn't a sequel to the highly-acclaimed Fallout 3, but rather a brand new game set in the same universe, though they confirmed that it will be similar in style to Fallout 3. The new game will be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio containing members of the original Fallout team, which Bethesda's Pete Hines discussed in an interview with Shacknews. The Fallout series also made headlines earlier this week when Bethesda trademarked the name for TV and film.

Work Progresses On 10,000 Year Clock 307

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:09PM from the artifexian-contrapulation dept.

KindMind writes "CNet has pictures of a planned 10,000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: 'Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex.' This was reviewed on Slashdot in 2005. Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical 'binary computer' that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial."

Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah 644

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @08:54AM from the tread-lightly dept.

The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting: "The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."

XP Reprieve, Downgrade May Continue After Win7 392

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @05:18AM from the operating-system-that-would-not-die dept.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Microsoft acknowledged today it has 'broadened the options' for PC makers to continue offering Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista — and potentially even Windows 7. However, the company would not confirm specific reports that HP has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Pro pre-installed through the end of April 2010. 'Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively. Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system — in this case, Vista — and did not expire at some arbitrary date.'" Update: 04/07 14:36 GMT by T : nandemoari adds "Not only will users be able to keep Windows Vista, but they'll be able to step back in time two generations, all the way to XP. "We will offer downgrade rights from Windows 7 to Windows XP in the same way we did with Windows Vista," a Microsoft rep said. Insiders speculate that the right to use this time machine might be reserved for those purchasing licenses for only two versions of Windows 7 — Ultimate and Professional. However, that's not yet been confirmed."

Slashdot Launches User Achievements 1582

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 01, 2009 @09:28AM from the can't-believe-it-took-so-long dept.

In a concerted effort to compete with more popular MMOs like World of Warcraft, we've decided to add an Achievement system to Slashdot. We've retroactively granted around 900,000 achievements to our logged in users. You can view them from your user page, or you can see my list if you're curious what a REAL achiever looks like. Many achievements have been sprinkled throughout the system and are awaiting discovery by dedicated Slashdot users, but a starter list of achievements is in the FAQ. I'll toss you one freebie: you can register your wow main for points if you're that kind of person. Now go forth and achieve!

Red Hat & AMD Demo Live VM Migration Across CPU Vendors 134

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 07, 2008 @12:14PM from the dude-where's-my-virtualization-business dept.

An anonymous reader notes an Inquirer story reporting on something of a breakthrough in virtual machine management — a demonstration (not yet a product) of migrating a running virtual machine across CPUs from different vendors (video here). "Red Hat and AMD have just done the so called impossible, and demonstrated VM live migration across CPU architectures. Not only that, they have demonstrated it across CPU vendors, potentially commoditizing server processors. This is quite a feat. Only a few months ago during VMworld, Intel and VMware claimed that this was impossible. Judging by an initial response, VMware is quite irked by this KVM accomplishment and they are pointing to stability concerns. This sound like scaremongering to me ... All the interesting controversy aside, cross-vendor migration is [obviously] a good thing for customers because it avoids platform lock-in."

Stretching Before Exercising Weakens Muscles 339

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 07, 2008 @10:40AM from the everything-you-know-is-wrong dept.

Khemisty writes "Back in grade school you were probably taught the importance of warm-up exercises, and it's likely you've continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes' warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but are actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg's muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements."

The Real Story On WPA's Flaw 67

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 07, 2008 @09:14AM from the calm-down dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes "The reports earlier today on WPA's TKIP key type being cracked were incorrect. I spoke at length with Erik Tews, the joint author of the paper that discloses a checksum weakness in TKIP that allows individual short packets to be decrypted without revealing the TKIP key. I wrote this up for Ars Technica with quite a bit of background on WEP and WPA. Tews's paper, co-written with Martin Beck, whom he credits as discovering and implementing a working crack (in aircrack-ng as a module), describes a way to use a backwards-compatible part of TKIP to exploit a weakness that remains from WEP. ARP packets and similarly short packets can be decoded. Longer packets are likely still safe, and TKIP hasn't been cracked. Don't believe the hype, but the exploit is still notable."

FCC Unanimously Approves White Space Wi-Fi 156

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 06, 2008 @01:17PM from the think-of-the-possibilities dept.

Smelly Jeffrey writes "With the release of this whitepaper, the FCC unanimously approved plans for a new technology with strong supporters and even stronger detractors. White Space Wi-Fi effectively allows manufacturers of wireless devices to incorporate transceivers that operate on unused DTV channels. Although the deregulation is new, the idea seems to have caught Google's interest recently as well. It seems that this has been rather rushed through the normally stagnant channels at the FCC. While some view it as interference in the already crowded spectrum, it seems the FCC Chairman really likes the idea of re-purposing dark parts of the newly allocated DTV bands once more." Update: 11/06 18:15 GMT by T : You may want to look at Tuesday's mention of the decision as well, but the additional links here are interesting.

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