HarryCaul - Slashdot User

Submission + - Blizzard sues Peons4Hire

Submitted by Jeian on Friday May 25, 2007 @10:18PM

Jeian writes: According to Community Manager Eyonix, Blizzard has filed a lawsuit against gold-selling site Peons4Hire. Details are sketchy, but it seems they are demanding that Peons4Hire cease advertising in-game immediately. Depending on the outcome of the suit, it could set an interesting precedent for sites that sell virtual currency.

Submission + - Terabyte Hard Drive Review

Submitted by

hungryhamster

on Friday May 25, 2007 @09:33PM

hungryhamster writes: "Let's take a look at the first terabyte hard drive, the Deskstar 7K1000 from Hitachi Global Storage, and see just how it performs. For an impressive $399 ($0.39/gig), is it worth your bucks? Extreme Tech provides an in-depth review of Hitachi's first Terabyte HHD. Benchmark Tests, performance charts, and comparisons with other HHDs are included. This is an interesting read. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2131552 ,00.asp"

Submission + - A Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders...

Submitted by

Ant

on Saturday May 19, 2007 @10:21PM

Ant writes: "This Psychology Today article says loners are pitied in our up-with-people culture, but the introvert reaps secret joy from the solitary life (some people simply enjoy being by themselves). Seen on Digg."

Submission + - Soliders Bond With Bots, Take Them Fishing

Submitted by HarryCaul on Monday May 07, 2007 @10:04PM

HarryCaul writes: Soldiers are finding themselves becoming more and more attached to their robotic helpers. During one test of a mine clearing robot, "every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield." The man in charge halted the test, though- "He just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg. This test, he charged, was inhumane." Sometimes the soldiers even take their metallic companions fishing. Is there more sympathy for Robot Rights than previously suspected?

Submission + - Book as College Graduation Present?

Submitted by tigersha on Saturday April 21, 2007 @04:37AM

tigersha writes: I am the boss of a young lad who worked for me for a few years as an intern. He is about to graduate with a degree in computer science and I would like to give him a book as present. Does not have to be CS. Any suggestions?

Submission + - Digital Media Archiving Challenges Hollywood

Submitted by HarryCaul on Saturday April 21, 2007 @04:17AM

HarryCaul writes: Movies are moving to digital, but what about long-term archiving of the master source materials? Turns out it's harder for digital media than for contemporary analog. Data is being lost, and studios have to learn to cope. Phil Feiner of the AMPAS sci-tech division says "when he worked on studio feature films he found missing frames or corrupted data on 40% of the data tapes that came in from digital intermediate houses" How to deal with it? Regular migration from old media to new media. Grover Crisp, says Sony has put in a program of migrating every two to three years. Other studios are following suit, but wht about indie features? Will we lose films like we lost the orignals of the 20s?

Submission + - STEAM Hacked, Credit Cards stolen

Submitted by

3Y3

on Thursday April 19, 2007 @02:25AM

3Y3 writes: "DailyTech is reporting that VALVe's STEAM system has been hacked into by a hacker known only as "MaddoxX", who has wasted no time gloating and publicly releasing internal information, such as credit card numbers, on the anti-Steam website No-Steam."

Submission + - The Math of Text Readability

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @12:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: Wired magazine has an article that explains The Law of Optical Volumes, a formula for spacing the letters on a printed page that results in maximum readability. Wired's new logo (did anyone notice?) obeys the law. Unfortunately, Web fonts don't allow custom kerning pairs, so you can't work the same magic online as in print. Could this be why some people still prefer newspapers and magazines to the Web?

Submission + - Human Sense of smell 'underestimated'

Submitted by

gollum123

on Monday December 18, 2006 @06:57PM

gollum123 writes: "The sensitivity of the human sense of smell has been significantly underestimated, a study suggests ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6183379.stm ). The work, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, asked people to follow scents on the ground, as a dog would do, and found they were as good. The researchers from University of California Berkley laid scent trails, including one of chocolate essential oil, in a grassy field, and asked 32 people to find the 10 metre trail and track it to the end. Those who took part were blindfolded and wore thick gloves and earplugs to force them to rely exclusively on smell. Two thirds were able to follow the scent. And while they remained slower than the animals at tracking scents, their performance improved over time. In other tests, it was found that humans required both nostrils to be working to be able to track scents."

Submission + - FTC To Investiage 'Viral Marketing' Practices

Submitted by mcflaherty on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @02:37PM

mcflaherty writes: The Federal Trade Commission(FTC)is going to investigate the use of so called 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model.

Submission + - Word Virus Expands Beyond Earth

Submitted by BoredNasaGeek on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @02:23PM

BoredNasaGeek writes: According to a call from the Space Shuttle commander to the mission control center the Shuttle crew currently have a problem with Word macro viruses on their computers. This leads to a ban on sending email attachments to the Shuttle. The message from the commander went something like this: 'Do you have any news on the.. I don't know if I should say this.. virus situation with Word documents?'

Submission + - Geek Fiction: Edgy sci-fi for techies

Submitted by scuzz2 on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @12:30PM

scuzz2 writes: Geek Fiction is a new series of sci-fi stories with attitude, full of "nerdy" references: Linux gadgets, Star Trek, Babylon 5, programming/hacking and stuff like that. In the first episode, a misanthropic teen virus writer dispatches the central hero with an M-160 rocket launcher.

Classic line (from later in the series): "They stared blinkingly, as helpless and perplexed as a Web 2.0 start-up experiencing its first server crash."

But the author (who also wrote Extreme Programming Refactored) wants your comments and ideas to feed back into the story. Community-driven fiction perhaps?

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