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stm2 writes
"As a long time fan of the stories, I watched as Star Wars transformed from one of the better sci-fi stories told to 'Whedon is my master now.' An article at the TechRepublic blog explores the weakness of the sequel trilogy and states that the Midi-chlorians are the culprit. Was it the Midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, the actors? When did Star Wars jump the shark?. A bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?"
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a.d.venturer writes
"Elite, the Metroid series, Dungeon Siege, God of War I and II, Half-Life (but not Half-Life 2), Shadow of the Colossus, the Grand Theft Auto series; some of the best games ever (and Dungeon Siege) have done away with the level mechanic and created uninterrupted game spaces devoid of loading screens and artificial breaks between periods of play. Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play, and a throwback to the era of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 - when games were stored on cassette tapes, and memory was measured in kilobytes. So in this era of multi-megabyte and gigabyte memory and fast access storage devices why do we continue to have games that are dominated by the level structure, be they commercial (Portal), independent (Darwinia) and amateur (Angband)? Why do games still have levels?"
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ariefwn writes
""As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IMEI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the 'Stocks' and 'Weather' widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects. I wonder if there will be any implications to owners of hacked iPhones..."
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drcagn writes
"Gene Simmons has blasted 'college' kids and claims that they have destroyed the music industry, with the labels also to blame for not properly suing them out of existence when they had the chance. When asked about Radiohead and Trent Reznor's recent support of a different direction in music distribution, he says "that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on f---ing crack?" When asked about music being free and making money off of merchandise, he says, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?" even though earlier in the interview he brags that he believes that KISS's merchandise is more profitable than Elvis's or the Beatles.'"
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DeviceGuru writes
"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the open-source Minix OS — a cousin of Linux — running on his homebrew minicomputer, the Magic-1, at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. The Magic-1 minicomputer is built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, and implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA. Rather than using a commercial microprocessor, Buzbee created his own microcoded CPU that runs at 4.09 MHz, and is in the same ballpark as an old 8086 in performance and capabilities. The CPU has a 22-bit physical address bus and an 8-bit data bus."
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ObsessiveMathsFreak writes
"Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser. This is to protest the 'notability purges' taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia's contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening?"
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An anonymous reader writes
"The Register is reporting that the blogosphere is alight with accusations of Microsoft forcing Windows Desktop Search on networks via the 'automatic install' feature of Windows Update — even if they had configured their systems not to use the program. Once installed, the search program began diligently indexing C drives and entire networks slowed to a crawl."
