Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Displays

Oculus Rift Raises Another $16 Million 104

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
Craefter writes "It seems that the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset caught the attention of investors after its showing at E3 this year. Spark Capital and Matrix Partners were able to push $16 million at Oculus VR in the hopes that the product will live up to the hype. The HD unit looks a bit more slick than the ski-goggles-with-a-tablet-glued-to-it prototype, but the device would look even more appealing if the next-gen consoles would commit to supporting it. (We all know how well the PS3's 'wave-stick' did as an afterthought.) That said, major titles like the 9-year-old Half-Life 2 and the 6-year-old Team Fortress 2 are getting full support for the device. Hopefully some developers are looking into support for the Oculus Rift as a launch feature, rather than an addition years after the fact. IA bit like the EAX standard from Soundblaster. That worked out well too."
DRM

DRM: How Book Publishers Failed To Learn From the Music Industry 212

Posted by Soulskill from the give-the-people-what-they-want dept.
Presto Vivace writes "In a blog post, danps explains how the music industry initially thought that the Internet meant that people wanted their music for free. In 2003 Apple persuaded the industry to use an online music store with DRM. But DRM just does not work for consumers, so by 2011 online music stores were DRM-free. Sadly, the book industry has not learned these lessons. And there are larger lessons for the gadget industry: 'The tech industry right now is churning out lots of different devices, operating systems and form factors in an attempt to get the One True Gadget — the thing you'll take with you everywhere and use for everything. That's a lovely aspiration, but I don't see it happening. What I see instead is people wanting to only carry around one thing at a time, and rotating through several: Smart phone for everyday use, tablet for the beach, laptop for the road, etc. If you can't get the book you paid for on each of those devices, it's a pain. As a reader I want to be able to put a book on everything as soon as I buy it so I always have a local (non-Internet dependent) copy — no matter which thing I run out of the house with.'"
Bitcoin

Bitcoin's Success With Investors Alienates Earliest Adopters 158

Posted by timothy from the who-has-the-gold-wins dept.
holy_calamity writes "Digital currency Bitcoin is gaining acceptance with mainstream venture capitalists, reports Technology Review, but at the price of its famed anonymity and ability to operate without central authority. Technology investors have now ploughed millions of dollars into a handful of Bitcoin-based payments and financial companies that are careful to follow financial regulations and don't offer anonymity. That's causing tensions in the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, some of whom feel their currency's success has involved abandoning its most important features."
Earth

Water Isolated for Over a Billion Years Found Under Ontario 207

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the secret-illuminati-hideout dept.
ananyo writes "Scientists working 2.4 kilometers below Earth's surface in a Canadian mine have tapped a source of water that has remained isolated for at least a billion years. The researchers say they do not yet know whether anything has been living in it all this time, but the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen — the right stuff to support life. Micrometer-scale pockets in minerals billions of years old can hold water that was trapped during the minerals' formation. But no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth's crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years (paper abstract)."
The Courts

Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video 243

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the when-idiots-and-networks-collide dept.
New submitter edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire Internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook, and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible. The thing is, the video is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment."

Submission + - Adding forums to a website, what is the best way?

Submitted by
DustyMurray
DustyMurray writes: "I am considering adding forums to my website, and am just getting confused by all the options. My first reaction is always DIY. You get better website integration, and it looks and feels 100% how you want it to look and feel. However looking at things like phpBB and Vanilla forums, I will be hard pressed to build a better user experience in a reasonable amount of time. Also these out-of-the-box solutions seem to be shouting "Easy to integrate with your website". So, considering this, how easy are these ready build forums really to integrate in your website. I remember one of my favorite site, going completely blabla when they started to use a generic forum instead. I even stopped going to them after a while... I definitely do not want that for my site.... So I want things like, looks and feels in integral part of the rest of my site. Want to be able to insert stuff on certain pages, so it's not either the forums, or my site... It must be a mix. And I do not want a second login system on my site. And last but not least, I definitely don't want to have this typical generic look that most forums sport, they just reek "out-of-the-box-very-vanilla".... So can all that be delivered with the out-of-the-box forums that exist today? And which one is the most flexible regarding these wishes."

Comment Re:Say what? (Score 1) 433

by jnork (#29935191) Attached to: Wait For Windows 7 SP1, Support Firm Warns Users

I've never met one of these mythical windows fanboys. Can someone point out to me where they are?

Actually, read any story about Apple, Mac, or OS X on The Register and chances are the Windows Fanbois and Microsoft Apologists will be out in force making disparaging comments. Especially if the article points out a flaw.

(To be fair, the Mac Fanbois tend to do the same thing in Windows or Microsoft articles, but you weren't asking about them.)

Comment Re:My $.02 (Score 1) 507

by ccarlquist (#29934733) Attached to: Installing Linux On Old Hardware?
Hum... I don't fully agree with these arguments. I for one have an old IBM Thinkpad 486DX4 notebook, 24MB RAM, 512MB HD. It is still running Slackware 7.1, being able to decode MP3 through mpg123 and madplay. I'm running Xfree 3.x, FVWM or Blackbox, I can surf the Internet on Netscape 3.x and edit docs using Maxwel Editor. I'm not concerned about "security" here because it is not connected so often, and even though, I don't keep important information stored here. A 486 is a terrible thing to waste...

Comment Re:Canada (Score 1) 253

by Interoperable (#29782033) Attached to: FCC Considers Opening Up US Broadband Access

That's a great resource, thanks for posting it.

I read Bell Canada's history up to about 1905 and then skimmed onward from there. It did indeed become a monopoly through government mandated favoritism and also through some exclusivity contracts with the railways and aggressive marketing that would probably be illegal today. I couldn't find anything that suggested federal money was used for its networks in a direct way though.

Comment Nitroglycerine (Score 1) 177

by Michael Woodhams (#29781969) Attached to: The Medical Benefits of Carbon Monoxide

For example, nitroglycerine is used as a heart medicine, yet if you ingest 100ml of it pure, your life expectency will be greatly reduced.

(Actually there are gazillions of examples. Most pharmaceuticals are lethal in high doses, even over-the-counter ones like paracetamol or vitamin D.)

Comment Re:Another success. (Score 5, Insightful) 106

by khallow (#29781929) Attached to: Facial Bones Grown From Fat-Derived Stem Cells
At the least, we need to know if we can replicate fully the features and functions of embryonic stem cells. We'll need embryonic stem cells for that purpose alone. If adult stem cells don't work completely like embryonic stem cells, that means that we may need a supply of embryonic stem cells indefinitely as well.

Comment Re:Not a right (Score 1) 875

by Rising Ape (#29781795) Attached to: 1Mb Broadband Access Becomes Legal Right In Finland

I'll rephrase the last part of my statement for clarity: "... then that eradication is morally right?"

Do I think so? No, but that wouldn't stop it happening if enough people wanted it to. While I don't think murder is morally acceptable, I can't provide a fundamental reason for that belief - I consider it axiomatic. I just wish everyone else were as realistic about the limitations of their philosophy.

The fact that some people commit murders is not evidence that murder is morally right. By the same logic, the fact that people's rights are often violated is not evidence that they don't have those rights.

No, but it is evidence that rights are not something fundamental to the universe, but instead reliant on active enforcement. Things which are fundamental and independent of human society, such as the laws of physics, cannot be violated even if everyone agrees to. People's rights, on the other hand, can, suggesting that they are not in fact fundamental and the whole concept of "natural" rights is a bit silly, really.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne

Close