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Role Playing (Games)

Second World of Warcraft Expansion Launched, Conquered 386

Posted by Soulskill from the worldwide-caffeine-shortage dept.
The much-anticipated second expansion to World of Warcraft, entitled Wrath of the Lich King, launched on Thursday, introducing a new continent, raising the level cap to 80, and bringing a wealth of new items, spells, dungeons, and monsters to the popular MMO. Crowds gathered and lines formed outside stores around the world leading up to the release. Massively has put together a series of articles for players wishing to familiarize themselves with the expansion, and CVG has a piece discussing the basics as well. It didn't take long for the first person to reach level 80; a French player called "Nymh" reached the level cap on his Warlock only 27 hours after the expansion went live. Not to be outdone, a guild named "TwentyFifthNovember" managed to get at least 25 raiders to 80 and then cleared all of the current expansion raid content less than three days after the launch. Fortunately for them, the next three content patches are each expected to contain new, more difficult raids.
Censorship

Afghan Student Gets 20 Years For Blasphemy 618

Posted by timothy from the consider-this-a-warning dept.
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "Despite nationwide public support for his initial death sentence, a three-judge appeals court has reduced the sentence of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh to 20 years in prison. Kambakhsh was charged with circulating an article on women's rights that he found online. From the article: 'Family members have said Kambakhsh was beaten and threatened with death until he signed a confession and that local journalists who expressed support for him were warned they would be arrested if they persisted.'"

Comment Re:Yesterday: $11b in profits for Exxon, today...? (Score 1) 1143

by shadowcabbit (#24439765) Attached to: House Dems Turn Out the Lights On the GOP

Here's a stupid fucking question. So they had a net profit of only 8% of $11 billion. Exactly $0.00 of that was spent on drilling the undeveloped land they have or funding research to buoy them up when the oil bubble collapses (read: when we collectively wake the fuck up and decide we're not going to waste money on non-renewable energy anymore). If they're not going to prevent the collapse of their own business model... then we sure as fuck have a right to prevent them from taking us with them, and step one is taking that 8%.
Wireless (Apple)

Submission + - Apple Drops the Ball on iPhone 2.0 Rollout

Submitted by zamboni1138
zamboni1138 writes: Anybody who purchased a new 3G iPhone today, or those that are trying to upgrade their existing first generation iPhone are running into a huge roadblock: They can't activate their phone. After about two hours of the "We could not complete your iTunes Store request" error message I gave up and went to work. Forums are ablaze with iRate iPhone customers who now own a cute brick, at least until Apple spins up some more activation servers to handle the load. Too bad iTunes will let you download and then install the 2.0 software, but doesn't tell you doing so will brick your phone until it can be reactivated.
Power

Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Device Gets Funded 367

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the race-for-the-power-finish-line dept.
pln2bz writes "Eric Lerner, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, has received $600k in funding, and a promise of phased payments of $10 million if scientific feasibility can be demonstrated to productize Lerner's focus fusion energy production device. Unlike the Tokamak, focus fusion does not require the plasma to be stable, does not produce significant amounts of dangerous radiation, directly injects electrons into the power grid without the need for turbines and would only cost around $300k to manufacture a generator. Lerner's inspiration for the technology is based upon an interpretation for astrophysical Herbig-Haro jets that agrees with the Electric Universe explanation."

Comment Re:Nuttier than fruitcakes (Score 1) 299

by QuantumFTL (#23480304) Attached to: ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons
They don't respond to electromagnetism, gravity, or the strong force.

IANAP (though I do have a physics degree), but you are completely wrong about neutrinos not being affected by gravity. Gravity curves spacetime itself (at least, if you accept GR) and therefore any ballistic particle passing through it will have a curved path, whether or not they have rest mass (which neutrinos seem to, as evidenced by spontaneous flavor changing). Heck, even :

Because it is an electrically neutral lepton, the neutrino interacts neither by way of the strong nor the electromagnetic force, but only through the weak force and gravity.

I'm not saying that neutrinos are easy to manipulate, but it's not as impossible as you make it sound.

Personally I think the late Dr. Thomas Gold's idea of aliens using excitation states in large nebulae such that they act as a MASER to fasciculate long-range communication is a much better solution, at least for broadcast purposes.
Databases

Sun May Begin Close Sourcing MySQL Features 509

Posted by samzenpus from the closing-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "From the MySQL User's Conference, Sun has announced, and former CEO Marten Mickos has confirmed, that Sun will be close sourcing sections of the MySQL code base. Sun will begin with close sourcing the backup solutions to MySQL, and will continue with more advanced features. With Oracle owning Innodb, and it being GPL, does this mean that MySQL will be removing it to introduce these features? Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."
Communications

Comcast Proposes Self Regulation and P2P Bill of Rights 343

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-conflict-of-interests-here dept.
Torodung writes "In a recent move, Comcast has proposed a 'P2P Bill of Rights,' joining the ranks of every great monopoly when threatened by government regulation for alleged misbehavior. They have instead proposed comprehensive industry self-regulation and cooperation with major P2P software vendors as a lesser evil: 'Comcast is looking to further position itself as proactively — and responsibly — addressing the issue of managing peer-to-peer traffic that traverses its network, announcing Tuesday it will lead an industry-wide effort to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and Internet service providers.'"
Power

The Texas Petawatt Laser 174

Posted by kdawson from the you-can-pet-a-dog-or-you-can-pet-a-cat dept.
Roland Piquepaille notes the hype surrounding what the University of Texas at Austin is calling the world's most powerful laser. During a tenth of a femtosecond this laser is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the US, and is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the Sun. On his own blog Roland points out that UT's is not the first petawatt laser; that distinction belongs to a system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1996.
The Courts

Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy 738

Posted by kdawson from the thinks-too-much dept.
lseltzer alerts us to a story in the Washington Post on the defense strategy in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, [the evidence] might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. 'Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,' defense counsel William Du Bois said. 'All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.'"
Book Reviews

Windows Vista Annoyances 399

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-a-big-list dept.
stoolpigeon writes "It has been well documented that the reception for Microsoft's Windows Vista has not been all that warm. Yet, visiting the web site of many PC manufacturers or visiting a retail outlet selling computers will show that most new hardware is being offered with Vista as the primary if not only option. O'Reilly's newest in their Annoyances series, "Windows Vista Annoyances", by David A. Karp, seeks to alleviate some of the pain for new Vista users. For the Vista owner who is able to put the book's suggestion into place, the edge should be taken off. For the individual considering a purchase of Vista and wondering if it can really be that bad, this book seems to indicate that yes, it is that bad." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
Television

Will the Web Replace TV? 306

Posted by Zonk from the already-has-for-me dept.
dratcw writes "With the continuing writers' strike cutting way back on the number of new and original TV shows available, many media Web sites are providing alternatives to TV that can be found on the Web. A number of sites are offering features describing broadcast/cable TV alternatives while you wait for that next episode of 'Chuck'. 'What better time than during the writers' strike to (re)discover Internet TV and video? The quantity, quality, and diversity of online video grows by the day; and though it's far from perfect, it is at least interesting enough to make you forget that you're watching it on a PC monitor.'" Any web-based favorites you'd like to point out for fellow commenters?
Businesses

Public Request For Microsoft To Release Deprecated File Formats 154

Posted by Zonk from the don't-hold-your-breath dept.
SgtChaireBourne writes "NLnet, a Dutch foundation for an open information society, has publicly called for Microsoft to release its deprecated formats into the public domain. The maker of Office has made large efforts during the last year to move against the OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300). These efforts have been producing a lot of commentary regarding the amount of data bound up in the Redmond-based company's proprietary specifications. It's a nasty situation to end up with files that cannot be read because the sole vendor with the documentation for the files has withdrawn permission. ODF is the way forward, or a step forward at the least, with new documents. But for the old documents in the legacy formats, they cannot be read without supporting software and that support requires full access to the specifications."

Comment John Scalzi on why it won't work (Score 1) 370

by CleverNickName (#21961464) Attached to: Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music
John Scalzi wrote a hilarious exchange on his blog the sums up perfectly why this idea is made of fail:

Sony BMG spokesperson: We're pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?
There's much more, but I didn't want to jack his entire post.

Microsoft Re-Brands PlaysForSure 194

Posted by Zonk from the always-a-pleasure-doing-business dept.
mikesd81 writes "Information Week writes about a licensing change intended to 'beat Apple at their own game'. They're going to use a combination of branding and DRM, and replace the "PlaysForSure" logo with a "Certified for Windows Vista" tag.'The certification is used to guarantee compatibility with Microsoft's copyright-protection software and is the same logo used for the company's Zune player. The problem, however, is that music and video bought from the online Zune Marketplace won't play in their native format on other devices, including those that will carry the new logo.'"

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