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Apple

Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform? 531

Posted by kdawson from the triple-word-score dept.
andylim writes "recombu.com is running an interesting piece about how Apple has created a 'Jumanji (board game) platform.' The 9.7-inch multi-touch screen is perfect for playing board games at home, and you could use Wi-Fi or 3G to play against other people when you're on your own. What would be really interesting is if you could pair the iPad with iPhones, 'Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone.' Now that would be cool."
Space

15-Year-Old Student Discovers New Pulsar 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sky-isn't-the-limit dept.
For the second time in as many years, a student has made a discovery while participating in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University designed to get students and teachers involved in analyzing data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This time it was high school sophomore Shay Bloxton, who discovered a brand new pulsar. "For Bloxton, the pulsar discovery may be only her first in a scientific career. 'Participating in the PSC has definitely encouraged me to pursue my dream of being an astrophysicist,' she said, adding that she hopes to attend West Virginia University to study astrophysics. Late last year, another West Virginia student, from South Harrison High School, Lucas Bolyard, discovered a pulsar-like object called a rotating radio transient. His discovery also came through participation in the PSC."
Graphics

Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83

Posted by timothy from the nice-of-them dept.
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."
Space

A Hyper-Velocity Impact In the Asteroid Belt? 114

Posted by Soulskill from the i-played-that-game dept.
astroengine writes "Astronomers have spotted something rather odd in the asteroid belt. It looks like a comet, but it's got a circular orbit, similar to an asteroid. Whether it's an asteroid or a comet, it has a long, comet-like tail, suggesting something is being vented into space. Some experts think it could be a very rare comet/asteroid hybrid being heated by the sun, but there's an even more exciting possibility: It could be the first ever observation of two asteroids colliding in the asteroid belt."
Wii

Wii Hardware Upgrade Won't Happen Soon 325

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-show-ugly-mario-in-hd dept.
As high-definition graphics become more and more entrenched in this generation of game consoles, Nintendo has had to deal with constant speculation about a new version of the Wii that would increase its capabilities. Today, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime bluntly denied that a hardware revision was imminent, saying, "We are confident the Wii home entertainment console has a very long life in front of it." He added, "In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet."
Space

Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88

Posted by kdawson from the toil-and-trouble dept.
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

Posted by kdawson from the hot-bits dept.
supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.
Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.
Emulation (Games)

Nintendo Upset Over Nokia Game Emulation Video 189

Posted by Soulskill from the super-mario-takedown dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo is investigating potential copyright infringement by Nokia during some video demos of their N900 phone, which can be seen emulating Nintendo games. Nintendo spokesman Robert Saunders says: 'We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place.' In the video, Nokia says, 'Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title.'"
Education

US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490

Posted by CmdrTaco from the talking-to-you-cliff dept.
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."
Security

Submission + - Reports of Hacked ATM at Defcon Untrue 1

Submitted by purduefan
purduefan writes: Recent reports of a fake ATM at Defcon turned out not to be true. According to the hotel, the ATM was turned off in advance of Defcon over security concerns. "Although it has been reported as an ATM machine purposely placed in the Riviera's convention lobby by some unknown hacker to capture data on others that attempt to use it during DEFCON, the truth is, the Riviera-owned-and-operated ATM was turned off and the cash was removed as a precaution in preparation for the conference," Robert Vannucci, president of the Riviera, said in a statement.
The Matrix

How The Matrix Online Went Wrong 144

Posted by Soulskill from the not-like-this dept.
As the July 31st deadline for The Matrix Online's closure looms, Gamer Limit is running a story discussing the game's shortcomings, as well as some of the decisions that led to its failure. Quoting: "I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something, because they constantly seemed to go out of their way to phase out existing characters in favor of newer ones. The cast overall basically made me, as a player, feel distant from the main storyline and made the entire game feel like a Matrix side story instead of the continuation it was meant to be. ... When MxO first launched there was an entire team dedicated to playing the game as Agents and other key characters as a means to further in-game events and directly interact with players, giving players the feeling that they truly were making a difference. After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."

Comment Better for me than my employer (Score 1) 1055

by purduefan (#26445101) Attached to: How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out?
I work the 9-80 schedule at a county government agency. I work an extra hour from 7-8 am, and it has improved my commute considerably. After adjusting to the slightly longer days, it isn't a big deal to get through it. The only issue I have is that I often have to adjust the day off to deal with important meetings or emergency responses. Not everyone in the agency works that schedule, so I get quite a bit done in the hour before everyone else shows up. The three-day weekends are great, and since you are only working a few extra hours each week, you don't get burned out. As for my employer, I am not sure what the benefit is to them. Because we have to have someone working to respond to the public from Monday through Friday, the office is actually open longer hours, so there is no savings on heat, lights etc. Considering that we are not officially open until 8, it doesn't provide a benefit to the community (the extra hours don't help them, and the number of employees is slightly reduced the rest of the week).
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T Censors Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza Webcast (multichannel.com)

Submitted by
gordette
gordette writes: ""Lollapalooza sponsor AT&T may have censored Pearl Jam's performance during the band's 'Blue Room' Live Lollapalooza Webcast. According to numerous reports, the telecom giant deleted non-obscene lyrics critical of President Bush," says this Multichannel blogger."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - U.S. slipping in ITO, Pakistan on the rise? (cio.com)

Submitted by
Stephanie Overby
Stephanie Overby writes: "A.T. Kearney came out with its annual list of the "best" places to send IT services work. Countries like the U.S. and Canada are sliding fast (the U.S. ranks 20 out of 50 countries), while others like Senegal, Mauritius, Uruguay, and Pakistan are gaining ground, says the IT consulting house.

CIO magazine says, "Seriously?"

BusinessWeek highlighted ten new countries on A.T. Kearney's list of top offshore outsourcing destinations.

Estonia made an auspicious entrance at number 15 on the top 50 countdown edging out such well-known offshore players as Russia, Israel, and our friendly neighbor to the north, Canada.

Other A.T. Kearney debutantes included Latvia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Senegal, Ukraine, and Pakistan.

Yes, Pakistan...


Countries were ranked on financial attractiveness based on compensation and infrastructure costs; people attractiveness (not physical!) based on skills, language capability, educational resources, and size of IT workforce; and economic/political environment."

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