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MST3K is Back, Sort Of 264

Polar Star writes "Retrocrush reports that Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett are back making fun of crappy movies again in a new incarnation called The Film Crew. In the first of many new DVDs to be released, they take on a 1969 abomination called Hollywood After Dark which features a still-not-very-young Rue McClanahan as a down-on-her-luck actress who becomes a stripper. Needless to say, it's one of the scariest movies you'll ever see. There's plenty of funny jokes throughout, and they definitely prove themselves worthy of carrying on the MST3K tradition." Update 1925 GMT by SM: Corrected a few oversights and pointed to The Film Crew's actual website.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - The Best MMO You're Not Playing: City of Heroes (cityofheroes.com)

Bonker writes: While Blizzard is certainly king of the MMO empire at the moment, it worth noting that Cryptic Studios has released the tenth free expansion to its popular comic-book themed MMO, 'City Of Heroes/City of Villains'. 'Issue 10: Invasion' sees Heroes and Villains alike defending their cities against attack from the alien Rikti. The expansion has a lot of new content, including a revamped co-op zone for Heroic and Villainous players to take the fight to the aliens. It also includes large-scale city-wide air-raids in which players can fight against spaceship bombers and teleporting alien invaders. Despite the 'large-scale' nature of the event, it's been coded so that it scales with the players attending. Solo-players can fight against the aliens just as well as team-oriented players. If you're not playing 'City Of' right now, you're really missing out on one of the most fun, most dynamic MMO gameplay experiences around.

Steve Jobs Hates Buttons 713

ElvaWSJ writes "While many technology companies load their products up with buttons, Steve Jobs treats them as blemishes that add complexity and hinder their clean aesthetics. The iPhone is Steve Jobs's attempt to crack a juicy new market for Apple Inc. But it's also part of a decades-long campaign by Mr. Jobs against a much broader target: buttons. The new Apple cellphone famously does without the keypads that adorn its rivals. Instead, it offers a touch-sensing screen for making phone calls and tapping out emails. The resulting look is one of the sparest ever for Apple, a company known for minimalist gadgets. "
Security

Submission + - Three Cheap Ways to Boost Security

narramissic writes: In a recent article, security consultant Brent Huston offers three quick, inexpensive tips for small businesses that are looking to increase the overall security of their networks. His first tip, not too surprisingly, is to migrate users away from Internet Explorer. Inexpensive? Yes. Quick? I'm not so sure. Trying to change users' habits isn't generally an easy proposition.
Television

Submission + - BBC opens archive for trial, making a Mac iPlayer

endofcell writes: "The BBC are finally moving forward by opening up their archive in a trial. "The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK. Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC's website ... The BBC's proposed iPlayer service, offering catch-up TV via the web and cable TV, would be re-engineered to work with Apple Macs and would eventually roll out to digital terrestrial TV (DTT) and set-top boxes.""
The Media

Submission + - GameLife Host Arrested for Massacre Threats

AbsoluteXyro writes: Kotaku reports that Andrew Rosenblum, the founder and co-host of GameLife, has been arrested for allegedly threatening to go on a Virginia Tech-like shooting spree at a Boston-area college. Rosenblum, who was taking classes at the Boston University, instant messaged his ex-girlfriend shortly after 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech, saying he was going to kill her, according to the Boston Herald. "(I)'m gonna (expletive) bring a gun to your school and kill you and K (another female student) and everybody you love. It's gonna be VT all over again," 20-year-old Andrew Rosenblum allegedly wrote in an e-mail to the victim just hours after 32 people were gunned at Virginia Tech.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Settles with Iowa

dringess writes: "As reported on Yahoo, Microsoft has settled the suit brought by the State of Iowa. Individuals can collect $16 for each copy of MS-DOS or Windows purchased from 1994-2006, while Office nets $29. No proof of purchase required! Now I can finally get some money from Microsoft!"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - DirectX 10 for XP

An anonymous reader writes: In a blog post earlier today, Faling Leaf Systems released a prerelease of their DirectX 10 compatibility libraries for Windows XP. They're available here and includes a readme on how to install it and get the examples from the MS DirectX SDK. Looks like a sign of good things to come and it's finally likely that we won't have to upgrade to Vista just to play DX10 games when they start coming out.
Media

Submission + - BBC Opens up Archive, extends iPlayer to Mac's

RotateLeftByte writes: "THe BBC is reporting that they are going to trial opening up their vast archives to 20,000 lucky users.

They will be able to access a huge range of content for download.
Also planned in the future is the ability to access this archive via Digital Terrestrial TV

This is plan is slightly ironic in a week when we have seen the end in sight for US Internet Radio, we have a major world broadcaster opening up their archives for download.
One objective of the trial is to determine which parts of the archive should be "free" and which should be operated under commercial terms.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6568163.stm"
Security

What to Do When Your Security is Breached 177

ancientribe writes "When you've got a full-blown security breach on your hands, what do you do? If you've been smart, you'll already have a computer security incident response team — and a plan — in place. But many companies are too resource-strapped to have a full-blown, fully-tested incident response strategy. DarkReading has some tips on what to do — and what not to do."
Sony

Why the PS3's February Sales May Be Misleading 127

1up's Luke Smith takes a look at February's NPD numbers, and has an observation to make about what they might mean for Sony. Though the company is almost certainly not selling as many PS3s as they'd like, the console still sold more units between November and February than a supply-constrained Xbox 360 did last year ... and despite a $200 more expensive pricetag. Though the console is certainly getting off to a slow start (and really needs great software, fast), it's still keeping pace with Microsoft's console from a year ago. "What does this mean for Sony? Considering the system's higher price point, if the platform can keep pace with the Xbox 360 through the first year (while the software matures), regardless of the installed base, the system has to be considered semi-successful. A concerning statistic between the two platforms' first January and February months is the drop-off in sales for those two months. From January 2006 to February 2006 the Xbox 360 sales trailed off 36% (250K units down to 161k units). At the same point in its lifespan, Sony's PlayStation 3 experienced a drop-off of 48% (244K units down to 127K units). That drop in sales, considering the units are available at retail, is cause for concern. Yet, despite trailing off by 25% more than its supply-constrained predecessor, the system does still cost $200 more."
Republicans

Submission + - Illegal White House Email Causing Security Risk?

An anonymous reader writes: Has White House email policy broken the law and endangered national security? Hold on, this gets complicated. While investigating what happened during the recent firing of eight federal prosecutors, it was revealed that much of the email from the White House were not using official government servers, but using servers provided by the Republican National Committee. (One of these serves was named 'GWB43.com'.) It was also reported that Karl Rove does 95% of his email on these non-governmental accounts.

This raises two critical issues: first, does this violate the Presidential Records Act, passed after Nixon and Watergate? Second, does this create a potential security breach? How much security does the RNC maintain, compared to the White House? There is also the issue of people on the White House payroll doing work for the RNC on government time, another potential law-breaker.

Henry Waxman, D-CA, wants to know what is going on. He has sent a letters to the RNC and the Bush-Cheney campaign to preserve there emails for congressional investigation. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/26/rnc-emails-wax man/

For comments on security see http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/005879.html and http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002875.php.

All these websites are extremely partisan. Let the Flame Wars begin!
Science

Scientists Create Sheep That Are 15 Percent Human 475

anthemaniac writes "Professor Esmail Zanjani and colleagues at the University of Nevada-Reno have created sheep that are 15 percent human at the cellular level. Half the organs in the sheep are human. The idea, of course, is to harvest those organs to transplant into human patients. From the article: 'He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.' One scientists worries, however, that the work could lead to new viruses that cross from animals to humans."

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