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DRM

Submission + - SimCity Launch Failure: A good case for DRM being bad for business (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by
earlzdotnet
earlzdotnet writes: "The SimCity release happened, yet there are many people incapable of playing the game. Many can't install the game because the Origin servers providing the downloads are overloaded. This is to be expected. But, one cited reason for this is because they didn't allow preloading of the game at all. Even if you decided to buy a disk set instead of download it, you'll still have problems installing it because it still needs a few files from their servers that wasn't provided

One of it's primary features is multiplayer support. However, single player support appears to have taken a back seat. So, now even the lucky few that have managed to get it installed are having to wait in a queue to play the single player game because it requires a slot on their servers.

Although it's a best guess at this point, but one of the probable causes of all this happening is because they were trying really hard to prevent piracy. It's not easily possible to pirate a game if all the logic goes through their servers. However, by doing it in this manner, they have (like most DRM schemes) harmed the paying customers primarily. As a result of these failures, many people are steering clear of buying the game and even requesting refunds from EA."
Games

Submission + - SimCity 5: How not to design a single player game. (inquisitr.com)

Submitted by choke
choke writes: Players attempting to play EA/Maxis' new SimCity game are finding that their save games are tied to a particular server, are facing problems with disconnects, inability to track friends or search for specific coop games online and failures to load game, and wait times of 20 minutes per login attempt.

The question is, why the online restriction? Does this possibly indicate future micro-transactions in game?

Submission + - NASA researching LENR (aka cold fusion) and they are not alone. (phys.org)

Submitted by Moabz
Moabz writes: There have been quite a few news reports about LENR lately. Unlike the drama about the Rossi e-cat, there seems to be a revival in legitimate scientific research into this area. University of Missouri is running a 5.5 million USD research project, and scientists at other institutes like Purdue, NASA, MIT, SRI, NRL are all looking into it.

A couple of days ago the Nuclear Energy Institute was talking about it on their facebook page and the American Nuclear Society posted a similar story on their "nuclear cafe". The University of Missouri will host a cold fusion conference in July this year and the topic will also be discussed in a talk at the upcoming "Nuclear & Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2013) organized by the ANS starting coming Monday.
Transportation

The Copyright Battle Over Custom-Built Batmobiles 194

Posted by samzenpus from the lost-their-wheels dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Eriq Gardner writes that Warner Brothers is suing California resident Mark Towle, a specialist in customizing replicas of automobiles featured in films and TV shows, for selling replicas of automobiles from the 1960s ABC series Batman by arguing that copyright protection extends to the overall look and feel of the Batmobile. The case hinges on what exactly is a Batmobile — an automobile or a piece of intellectual property? Warner attorney J. Andrew Coombs argues in legal papers that the Batmobile incorporates trademarks with distinctive secondary meaning and that by selling an unauthorized replica, Towle is likely to confuse consumers about whether the cars are DC products are not. Towle's attorney Larry Zerner, argues that automobiles aren't copyrightable. 'It is black letter law that useful articles, such as automobiles, do not qualify as "sculptural works" and are thus not eligible for copyright protection,' writes Zerner adding that a decision to affirm copyright elements of automotive design features could be exploited by automobile manufacturers. 'The implications of a ruling upholding this standard are easy to imagine. Ford, Toyota, Ferrari and Honda would start publishing comic books, so that they could protect what, up until now, was unprotectable.'"

Submission + - Homosexuality's Cause Isn't Genetics, but the Answer Does Lie in the Womb

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As long as natural selection has been an accepted scientific theory, homosexuality has been a riddle for scientists. If a person is attracted to people of the same gender, he or she cannot have biological children with their chosen partner. For most of history, before in vitro fertilization, that meant that homosexuality could not be carried out genetically. In addition, because homosexuality makes it more difficult to have biological children, researchers could not understand how it was possible that the trait would survive across genetics. However, scientists believe that they may have cracked the code, and the answer does lie slightly in genetics.
Input Devices

Submission + - Razer Mouse Crippled Without Online Activation

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: At Overclock.net forums, nickname channelx99 tells a story about a frustrating obstacle when he begun to use a Razer Naga mouse. A software is required to enable the full functionality of the mouse. The user was greeted by a login screen which couldn't be bypassed, and even worse, the account creation didn't work at the time. It turned out that the Razor activation server was down. As result, channelx99 was left out in the cold, and he wraps up 'Nowhere on the box does it say anything about needing an internet connection to "activate" a mouse. If the servers go down in the future, anyone who buys this mouse is out of luck.'
Businesses

Submission + - GMO documentary released online for free (geneticroulettemovie.com)

Submitted by
Zibodiz
Zibodiz writes: "Many here on Slashdot are actively in support of GMO studies, and hence probably don't want to support an anti-GMO documentary. If you want to see what 'the other side' has to say, without funding them by purchasing the DVD, the new documentary has been released online for free until Saturday, 9/22/12.
From the site:
When the US government ignored repeated warnings by its own scientists and allowed untested genetically modified (GM) crops into our environment and food supply, it was a gamble of unprecedented proportions. The health of all living things and all future generations were put at risk by an infant technology.

After two decades, physicians and scientists have uncovered a grave trend. The same serious health problems found in lab animals, livestock, and pets that have been fed GM foods are now on the rise in the US population. And when people and animals stop eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs), their health improves.

This seminal documentary provides compelling evidence to help explain the deteriorating health of Americans, especially among children, and offers a recipe for protecting ourselves and our future."

Submission + - Lack of copyright in the 19th century made Germany become the mightiest (spiegel.de)

Submitted by
alexandre_ganso
alexandre_ganso writes: "While the British Empire was at the top of the world, Germany was a agrarian country. Then something changed. Its rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century, according to a German historian, is due to an absence of copyright law, as the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might."
Emulation (Games)

Video The State of the Diablo 3 Beta (Two Videos) Screenshot-sm 237

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-awhile-and-listen dept.
It's been almost four years since Diablo 3 was announced, and its development began years earlier. Its predecessors helped define the action RPG genre, so anticipation is high among fans of the franchise. The game has undergone closed beta testing since September, and a lot has changed since then. Now that Blizzard has settled on May 15th as a release date, we thought this would be a good time to take a look at the state of the game as it currently exists. These two videos show actual gameplay of the various classes, explain the skill and rune systems, take a look at the auction house, and go over many of the other changes since the beginning of development. (Click to play the first video, and the second one will play automagically after the first one ends.)
Space

Submission + - Astronomers confirm a hot and steamy exoplanet (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "The extrasolar planet GJ 1214b was discovered in 2009 orbiting a nearby (40 light year distant) red dwarf star. The planet was quickly found to have a thick atmosphere, but it wasn't known at the time if the composition was water vapor or a hazy shroud of particulates. New Hubble observations confirm the atmosphere of the exoplanet is rich in water, comprising up to 50% of the atmosphere's mass. At 230 degrees Celsius, this means the planet is shrouded in steam."

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