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Businesses

EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs 161

Posted by Soulskill from the say-goodnight-folks dept.
lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."
Security

Easing the Job of Family Tech Support? 932

Posted by Soulskill from the shock-collars-and-a-willingness-to-yell dept.
DarkDevil writes "Ever since I was introduced to computers at a very young age, I've been the resident tech support for a household of 7 users. I've been in a cycle for the last ~8 years where something happens to my parents' computer, I spend a week or two trying to non-destructively fix the problem (and try to explain to the users what caused it and how to avoid it), and then if it's not easily fixed I'll reformat and start from scratch. Most often, the level of infection warrants a reformat, which usually ends up taking even more time to get the computer back to how my parents know how to use it. 4-8 months later, it happens again. Recently, I found ~380 instances of malware and 6 viruses. I only realized something was wrong with their computer after it slowed down the entire network whenever anyone used it. My question for Slashdot is: are there any resources out there that explain computer viruses, malware, adware, and general safe computer practices to non-technical people in an easy-to-digest format? The security flaws in my house are 9, 26, and ~50 years old, with no technical background aside from surfing the internet. Something in video format would be ideal as they are perfectly happy with our current arrangement and so it'll be hard to get them reading pages and pages of technical papers."
Software

Remus Project Brings Transparent High Availability To Xen 137

Posted by timothy from the when-servers-go-south-a-song dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Remus project has just been incorporated into the Xen hypervisor. Developed at the University of British Columbia, Remus provides a thin layer that continuously replicates a running virtual machine onto a second physical host. Remus requires no modifications to the OS or applications within the protected VM: on failure, Remus activates the replica on the second host, and the VM simply picks up where the original system died. Open TCP connections remain intact, and applications continue to run unaware of the failure. It's pretty fun to yank the plug out on your web server and see everything continue to tick along. This sort of HA has traditionally required either really expensive hardware, or very complex and invasive modifications to applications and OSes."
Mozilla

Web Open Font Format Gets Backing From Mozilla 206

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the turns-out-open-is-easier-to-adopt dept.
A new format specification has reached consensus among web and type designers and is being backed by Mozilla. Dubbed Web Open Font Format (WOFF), it is an effort to bring advanced typography to the Web in a much better way. Support for the new spec will be included as a part of Firefox 3.6 which just recently hit beta. "WOFF combines the work Leming and Blokland had done on embedding a variety of useful font metadata with the font resource compression that Kew had developed. The end result is a format that includes optimized compression that reduces the download time needed to load font resources while incorporating information about the font's origin and licensing. The format doesn't include any encryption or DRM, so it should be universally accepted by browser vendors — this should also qualify it for adoption by the W3C."
Linux Business

Submission + - Push updates for Linux clients?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm trying to push for Linux at my company where all of our desktops are windows. On windows servers, I can "push-out" new revisions of software. For example, if I wanted to, I could force all client desktops to upgrade to the newest version of Opera or Firefox (or more likely a program I wrote, or an AntiVirus software...). I can make one change on the server and all clients are forced into the new version of the software. The question: how can I do this on a Linux OS? This can become vitally important in the future, as I don't want to have to run around to 40 computers everytime I want to update my program...
NASA

NASA Robots and Rovers At Play In the Desert 54

Posted by timothy from the not-enslaving-robots-no-sirree dept.
Geoffrey.landis writes "Robots and rovers will be running around in the desert in the NASA Desert RATS ('Research and Technology Studies') test in Arizona, including the heavy-lift rover 'All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer,' or ATHLETE. (See videos from newscientist.com). Some NASA robots from an earlier field test of robotic lunar excavators can be seen on video from the NASA page."
Image

In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor 171

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-there-is-half-the-fun dept.
brumgrunt writes "Technically a corridor in a science-fiction movie should just be a means of getting from one big expensive set to the next, and yet Den Of Geek writes lovingly of the detailed conduits in films such as Alien, Outland, Solaris and even this year's Moon by Duncan Jones."
Security

Submission + - Skype Trojan can log VoIP conversations (pcauthority.com.au) 1

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Security giant Symantec claims to have found the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users. Trojan.Peskyspy is spyware which records a voice call and stores it as an MP3 file for later transmission. An infected machine will use the software that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3. The file is then sent over the internet to a predefined server where the attacker can listen to the recorded conversations.

Comment What's the big deal? (Score 4, Interesting) 154

by fewnorms (#29042991) Attached to: Microsoft, Nokia Team To Add Mobile Office Apps To Phones
Seriously, someone explain to me why this is such a big deal? The announcement was made a few days ago that a joint announcement was forthcoming, and this is all they have? I seriously don't get it. I used to own a Nokia Communicator 9300i back in the day that was fully able to edit word and excel documents. Ok, not the most complicated ones, but the apps got the job done pretty well. This was at least 3 years ago by now.
Whooptiedoo! We can now edit files on the go! (sound familiar?)
What am I missing here?

Comment Re:Before the arguments start? (Score 3, Informative) 517

by fewnorms (#28846483) Attached to: Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum
And before people start posting [Citation Needed], here's a link to an article talking about Mininova in particular, but also mentions the current law in the Netherlands with regards to downloading music and movies.
Quoted from the article, for those too lazy to read it:

Under Dutch law, downloading games and software is illegal, but sharing copied films and music is not. The Dutch copyright law allows consumers to make a copy of CD's and DVD's they own, and to store those copies as files on their personal computers.

So there you have it.

Comment Re:Oh dear (Score 3, Insightful) 413

by fewnorms (#27648059) Attached to: Stephen Hawking Is "Very Ill" In Hospital
Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. The guy has achieved more than almost anyone on the planet, and all that while being completely wheelchair bound and having a speech impediment. Most fully healthy and able-bodied people can't even remotely come close to his intellect and insights.
It'll be a shame if this turns out to be his last hospital visit, but if it is, he knows his name will be remembered for a long, long time to come.
Good luck, mr. Hawking. I do hope you pull through once again.

Comment What's this? (Score 4, Insightful) 90

by fewnorms (#26206115) Attached to: With Lawsuit Settled, Hackers Working With MBTA
Common sense finally prevailing? Has hell frozen over?
On one hand I'm surprised that the MBTA has decided to work with these guys to make their system more secure, on the other hand I wish this would happen more often instead of the mindless suing that government organizations and other companies seem so fond of.

Why Aren't More Linux Users Gamers? 693

Posted by Zonk from the all-about-the-games dept.
tops writes "MadPenguin.org wonders why more Linux users aren't gamers and attempts to answer that question. The article suggests, 'As far as I'm concerned, it all comes down to a choice. Expect the gaming industry to follow the Linux doctrine or instead, build up a viable, cross platform gaming market that includes us, the Linux users.' The article urges publishers to consider Linux users as a viable market, and requests that game developers target Linux as a platform during the pre-production phase." What do you think are the most important obstacles barring the big game publishers from reaching out to the Linux market more than they already do?
Social Networks

Facebook Interviewer Heckled at Web Conference 179

Posted by CmdrTaco from the go-home-and-cry-in-your-billions dept.
jriding writes "Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old billionaire, was the keynote speaker at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy took the stage to question Zuckerberg, but the audience quickly grew tired of the topics she focused on, claiming that the real issues were being ignored. "Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview," claimed audience member, Jason Pontin." The audience apparently wanted to know more about privacy and portability issues, which I guess shouldn't surprise anyone here.

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