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Comment Hooray! (Score 1) 313

by skiminki (#42907317) Attached to: Valve Officially Launches Steam For Linux

I played Serious Sam 3 month ago during the beta. Bought yesterday SS3 DLC plus the original Half-life. The latter seems to run perfectly on my Intel HD4000-based laptop (SS3 will surely not...)

I'd expect that some of the big titles are bound to come to Linux if and when Steambox finds traction. Many of the big titles are already ported to Mac OSX, which of course, means OpenGL instead of DirectX.

I look for the day when I can finally and permanently delete my Windows partition, which exists solely for gaming purposes.

Comment Re:Interview of Executive Director of TTVK (Score 4, Insightful) 82

by skiminki (#42885881) Attached to: Finnish Anti-Piracy Site Pirates Thepiratebay Content

I read the same interview. To me, it seems that the director does not really know much about copyrights and is doing his best to avoid direct answers to simple questions. His best is not very good, though.

Basically he's saying that it's OK to rip the layout and the source code of a web site if you change the logo. And that there's no ideological problem whatsoever. I wonder whether anyone is going to cite that in legal cases against TTVK...
Earth

Submission + - The Straight Poop on Microsoft's New Data Center (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "Microsoft is planning a zero-carbon data center in Wyoming that will use biogas from an adjacent wastewater treatment plant as its power supply.

Once the R&D project is complete, Microsoft will donate the Data Plant to the City of Cheyenne and the University of Wyoming for future research.

The ultimate goal of the Data Plant program is to free data centers from having to rely on expensive and potentially unstable power grids."

Submission + - U.S. regulators sue Intrade, Intrade blocks US accounts (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Charliemopps
Charliemopps writes: “We are sorry to announce that due to legal and regulatory pressures, Intrade can no longer allow US residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets,”

The CFTC’s civil complaint charged that Intrade and its operator solicited customers to trade investment contracts that technically are options. Options must be traded on approved, regulated exchanges.

Well... at least they're going after the real crooks right?
Games

Submission + - Autism Intervention: Seeing Faces as a Whole (rockethub.com)

Submitted by dsraistlin
dsraistlin writes: I thought I would write to post about an interesting autism intervention research project that currently has a crowd funding initiative running in the latest #SciFund round at Rockethub. The latest round started November 11th as mentioned by jearbear at that time.

I am brining this up again now, for a couple reasons:
  • This project is at the nexus of several topics of interest to Slashdot readers: Science, Research, Autism, and Video Games.
  • There are many other worthwhile projects trying to obtain funding thought the #SciFund Challenge

In the spirit of full disclosure my wife is one of the researchers involved with this project, and while I have a vested interest in seeing this succeed that does not lessen the merit of these projects and initiative.
News

Submission + - Knight Capital Sets the Record Straight on Algo Testing (advancedtrading.com)

Submitted by
Cara_Latham
Cara_Latham writes: "Knight Capital Group remains under scrutiny more than three months after going live with improperly installed software that triggered a wave of errant trades that nearly put the firm out of business.

The Aug. 1 incident led to the $389.9 million third-quarter loss that Knight Capital posted in October, drove the firm to hire IBM to review its software and pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to convene a roundtable of industry experts to discuss ways of preventing such market dislocating errors.

In the wake of that episode, the buy side began taking a closer look at the algorithmic trading tools it gets from third-party providers like Knight Capital. There's greater urgency among buy-side firms to figure out how their algorithms could be impacted by the sort of errant orders that originated that fateful day from Knight's market-making unit, which executes order flow for retail investors.

But as the firm looks to move on, Brendan McCarthy, head of sales and trading for Knight's algorithmic trading group, wants to set the record straight about his side of the business. McCarthy took over the role in September following the departure of Joseph Wald, the first senior executive to leave the company after the software glitch hit."
Open Source

Submission + - Top ten open source gifts for the holidays (opensource.com)

Submitted by tarheel2012
tarheel2012 writes: A list of ten open source gifts for that special (open source) someone. The list includes Raspberry Pi, MaKey MaKey, BeagleBone, Flora, and others. All of the gadgets are either open source hardware, or run on open source software. Which do you think are the best? Do you think any great open source gadgets were left out?
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Good News on the Free Speech Front

Submitted by fustakrakich
fustakrakich writes: Supreme Court blocks Illinois law prohibiting taping of police:

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a plea from the Cook County state's attorney to allow enforcement of a law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers...

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 2010 against State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to block prosecution of ACLU staff for recording police officers performing their duties in public places, one of the group's long-standing monitoring missions.
Games

Submission + - Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Games (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Game designer Tadhg Kelly has an article discussing where the games industry has gone over the past several years. Gaming has become more of a business, and in doing so, become more of a science as well. When maximizing revenue is a primary concern, development studios try to reduce successful game designs to individual elements, then simply seek to add those elements to whatever game they're working on, like throwing spices into a stew. Kelly points out that indie developers who are willing to experiment often succeed because they understand something more fundamental about games: fun. Quoting: 'The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus “Notch” Persson) didn’t just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn’t just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That’s why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies. The fun factor is about more than making a game is amusing or full of pretty rewards. If your game is a dynamic system to be mastered and won, then you can go nuts. If you can give the player real fun then you can afford to break some of those format rules, and that’s how you get to lead rather than follow the market. If not then be prepared to pay through the nose to acquire and retain players.'
Google

Submission + - Google.com.pk and 284 Other .PK Domains Hacked (propakistani.pk) 1

Submitted by ryzvonusef
ryzvonusef writes: Start page for majority of Pakistanis – when they first visited it this morning – was found hacked and defaced. Yes, Google.Com.PK along with 284 other .PK domains were hacked today (and are still defaced).

According to Irfan Ahmed, an expert on Pakistani websites and web-servers, this defacement is due to change in DNS entries for 284 .PK domains that are managed by MarkMoniter.

Defaced domains include Microsoft.PK, apple.PK, paypal.PK, ebay.PK, blogspot.PK, chrome.PK, Cisco.PK and others.

Apparently no one has claimed the responsibility for the incident, but a message appearing on defaced pages, including on Google.com.pk is displaying a message in Turkish language, hinting that the hacker could be Turkish in origin.

Hacker hasn’t left any message for anyone, unlike the norm that hackers follow to convey their message through such defacements.

However, there is a phrase saying “Downed Pakistan”, a sign of victory for hackers when the deface a website.

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