Comment round table (Score 1) 520
Unless you have an 8 hour a day meeting in mind, it's counterproductive.
Developers like to share ideas and get direction periodically and then go work in solitude.
Comment Re: why still popular? (Score 1) 472
I agree. AVG was awesome up until 8.5. 9.0 is the buggiest resource-hogging, system-locking piece of shit I've seen since Norton and Mcafee. Problem is 9.0 came out about ten minutes after I renewed our company's license for 2 years.
Comment solar power to Earth? (Score 0, Redundant) 137
Err, doesn't the sun already do that?
Scientists Say Toads Can Predict Earthquakes 66
reillymj writes "Researchers claim toads sensed a severe earthquake last year five days before it hit. Last spring's L'Aquila earthquake devastated the medieval city of the same name in Italy. Five days earlier, a group of biologists noticed some toads behaving strangely in a pond nearby that would later be the quake's epicenter."
Comment I don't get it. (Score 1) 401
That's a pretty crappy business model.
Comment well... (Score 1) 538
This bodes well for the possibility of finding alien life.
Living In Tokyo's Capsule Hotels 269
afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”
EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."
Comment Since when.. (Score 5, Interesting) 460
...are Fark and Digg considered 'technical culture' sites. Seriously, this isn't 2001. Last time I checked, the Internet had sort of entered the mainstream and 'slacking off at work' isn't really considered exclusively IT.
Comment You knew this was coming... (Score 4, Insightful) 275
This is why we can't have nice things.
Comment Paid call (Score 2, Informative) 735
My wife is an OR (operating room) nurse who is paid to be on call, which I would consider to be roughly analogous to this topic. However, there are a couple of major differences:
1. She has to go to a specific location (the hospital) when called in. It's not like she can do her job from home.
2. She's paid hourly.
3. Usually if she gets called in, someone is dying. I would rarely, if ever, classify an IT emergency anywhere near as important as that.
Comment Much less glorious (Score 1) 623
IT is more akin to a boring ubiquitous commodity than a gee-whiz technological marvel.
These days we're more like car mechanics and plumbers than 'gurus'.
EA Looking Into Reviving Classic Games? 142
Gamasutra reports that Electronic Arts has filed for trademarks on several popular old franchises: Populous, Wing Commander, Theme Park, and Road Rash. This, along with comments from Harvey Elliot of EA's Bright Light Studio, have led many to suspect that we may see new titles for those IPs in the near future. Elliot said, "If you remember all the old classics you played, if you go back and play them now, they're not the same. They were right for their time, and the trick with those games is coming up with what's right for the time now. I'm going to look at them at some point; I think there's an opportunity to bring those back in the future, but only if it's right for the time and not just a 'remake' or something. We'd need to do it in a way that's true to the original values, but would still make a great game today."
Huge Unidentified Organic Blob Floating Around Alaska 424
Z80xxc! writes "The Anchorage Daily News reports that a 15 mile-long blob of unknown, 'gooey,' probably organic material is floating past communities on Alaska's North Slope. The US Coast Guard sent pollution experts to investigate, who determined that it was not an oil spill or other type of pollution, but were unable to determine what it is. A sample is currently being analyzed by experts in Anchorage, while the blob is following the current northwards."
ZeniMax, Parent Company of Bethesda, Buys id Software 147
CelticLo writes "ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has completed the acquisition of legendary game studio id Software, creators of world-renowned games such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and its upcoming title, Rage. In an interview with Kotaku, John Carmack said, 'We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured. And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.' The press release confirmed that id's projects will remain under Carmack's control."
