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PC Games (Games)

An Early Look At Civilization V 286

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Games

Avataritis — On the Abundance of Customizable Game Characters 78

Posted by Soulskill from the forty-nine-precisely-placed-freckles dept.
Martyn Zachary writes "The Slowdown has posted a new critique, 'Avataritis,' that attempts to portray the utilization of character customization as a pandemic, emotional response on behalf of publishers and developers to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by the enlarging, widening player base of video games. 'No mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.' The article discusses the emergence and role of gender criticism and research in relation to the recent proliferation of the customizable avatar. The story also dissects the very act of character creation, subsequently aiming to clarify several semantic distortions related to the terminology utilized in character creation, and in turn breaking apart the concepts of relatability and understandability, wholly differentiating the two. The overarching analysis is finally related to examples from the gaming marketplace, where many continue to corroborate apparent falsehoods and misunderstandings in relation to the utilization of the avatar. Ultimately, the writer hopes to dissuade readers, developers and players from believing that written narratives are going away as customization and emergent content are entering video games with full force."
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA to test emergency ability of new spacecraft 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "NASA this week will show off the first mock up of its Orion space capsule ahead of the capsule's first emergency astronaut escape system test. NASA in late 2008, says it will jettison the full-size structural model off a simulated launch pad at the US Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The launch escape vehicle sits atop the Orion capsule which is slated to be bolted on an Ares rocket. The escape vehicle is made up of three solid rocket motors as well as separation mechanisms and canards, and should offer the crew an escape capability in the event of an emergency during launch, according to NASA. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Haiku OS Resurrects BeOS as Open Source 269

Posted by Zonk from the going-back-in-time dept.
Technical Writing Geek writes "The Haiku project, which began shortly after the death of BeOS in 2001, aims to bring together the technical advantages of BeOS and the freedom of open source. 'The project has drawn dozens of contributors who have written over seven million lines of code. Although Haiku is nearly feature-complete, there are still numerous bugs that must be fixed before it is ready for day-to-day use. The design principles behind Haiku are very closely aligned with those of BeOS. The central goal of the Haiku project is to create an operating system that is ideally suited for use on the desktop--this differs significantly from Linux and other open-source operating systems which are intended for use in a diverse range of settings including server and embedded environments.'"
Security

Submission + - Canadian Passport Data Breach Due To Bad Coding

Submitted by
circletimessquare
circletimessquare writes: "Hot on the heels of the large government data breach in the UK comes news of a serious security hole in the Canadian passport application process. Jamie Laning, a Canadian IT worker, discovered that just by tweaking a single character in the query string of the URL of his Passport application session, he was able to bring up other people's applications. He was able to view personal information such as social insurance numbers, driver's licence numbers, a federal ID card number and even a firearms licence number. Mr. Laning informed Passport Canada, who now says the error is already fixed. According to the article, Canadian law does not require organizations to disclose when they've suffered security breaches. Ouch."
The Internet

Submission + - 47-year-old Internet stalker causes suicide 1

Submitted by
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast writes: "Perhaps others had heard about this story, but I hadn't noticed it until it hit The Times today. A 47-year-old woman — pretending to be a teenage boy — played with the emotions of a neighboring teenage girl, eventually causing her to commit suicide. Her penalty? Nothing. I admit to being of two minds on this one: should someone be culpable for, by way of the written word, causing mental anguish leading to someone's death? The Free Speech part of me says no; the humane part of me says yes."
Microsoft

Submission + - Sysinternal Tools going Bye Bye...? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently I have tried to download the source codes for some Sysinternal tools, namely pskill.exe, to incorporate it into my program to help kill a spawned process when it is not behaving properly. Since Microsoft have purchased sysinternal.com, us administrators have have become worried that these cool tools, that are necessary for our day to day needs, might vanish into thin air. The Source codes have disappeared from the website during migration, and now all their download links no longer works. Is this the end of Sysinternal tools?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Twentieth Century Fox Confirm 'X-Files 2'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After years of speculation, the Studio officially announced that production of the long-awaited X-Files sequel will commence December 10th, with a release date set for July 25, 2008. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are signed to reprise their roles as Mulder and Scully. The story is to be a standalone rather than a continuation of the long-running Mytharc of Alien conspiracies. [URL:http://www.variety.com/VR1117975124.html]
Software

Submission + - Linux Kernel Developers Sabotage Reiser4 (150m.com)

Submitted by
Teran McKinney
Teran McKinney writes: "Hans Reiser's trial is coming up, so this really makes things really interesting. This article covers some Linux kernel developers "sabotaging" and breaking Namesys's Reiser4 code. This article shows two examples of where it strongly appears that the Reiser4 code was modified to introduce problems. A good explanation is definately needed for this."
The Internet

Submission + - Navisite Fumbles Migration of 200,000 web sites (ipdemocracy.com)

Submitted by
tclark
tclark writes: "Managed hosting provider Navisite went forward with a badly planned attempt to migrate thousands of customers from the recently purchased Alabanza NOC in Virginia to its facility in Andover MA. After numerous problems and missed deadlines, customer websites are still down with little information coming from Navisite. Many current customers are considering ditching the troubled service provider."
Networking

Submission + - Private/Reserved Addresses being assigned on net!

Submitted by
Liastnir
Liastnir writes: "Someone is actually using 10.*.*.* network addresses on the internet. Using a computer directly connected to the internet, try running tracert on 10.21.8.43 and you will reach a host. Several other addresses in that area are also being assigned. I have to emphasize (because I've made the mistake on our campus network) to be off a LAN when you try it."
Windows

Submission + - Dell pulls support for x64 Vista? (neowin.net) 5

Submitted by
leighklotz
leighklotz writes: "This message is getting forwarded about with some concern by those who have to validate software on multiple platforms...it looks like Windows is beginning to see the fragmentation that Linux is so often accused of.

A user named "Morpheus Phreak" wrote on neowin:

I do a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 Edition. The install finishes and my system reboots with in-box drivers for almost all of my hardware. The first thing I do is go to the Dell Support site and download drivers, or do I? It seems that Dell has decided to stop supporting all 64-bit editions of Windows, thus nothing to download.

I make a post on their forums asking if anyone knows if it's temporary and I receive this response from a Dell employee:

"It cost us in time and money to validate drivers. We built PCs with specific operating systems in mind. That is all we will support."


I mention to the Dell employee that he must be mistaken as that would violate their Vista Logo contract with Microsoft. At this point the Dell employee replied tersely with the following:

"Be assured, our legal team is on top of this decision."


At this point I'm stumped and a bit angry. After all the OEM Logo requirements state, "OEMs using x64 implementations must have signed drivers available to end users if shipping a 32-bit version of Windows Vista on the system."

By removing their x64 driver support they have now violated their contract with Microsoft. Any x64-based systems they sell now with the logo are illegal. One can only help but wonder, why would Dell put themselves in this position?

I'll kindly step down from my Soapbox now, but I ask one question to all of you.

Where do we go from here?
"
Enlightenment

Submission + - New Giant Dinosaur Species Found (interactivegenius.com)

Submitted by
ivorobey
ivorobey writes: "On Monday, scientists from Argentina and Brazil uncovered the skeleton of a new dinosaur species. The discovery was made in Argentina of a 105 foot dinosaur skeleton, making this one of the larges dinosaurs ever to be found."
Education

Submission + - Books that substitute for CS degree? 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Are there any good books out there that would be good at concisely covering the key and most important areas of a CS education for those programmers who never obtained a CS degree? I am a self-taught programmer and computer hobbyist with a degree in physics, and I would like to find a book(s) that would give me a better understanding of what I am missing by not having obtained a CS degree. I realize this may involve some differing opinion on what the most important parts were, and I would be interested in hearing everyone's take on this as well. It would also be interesting to hear from an employer perspective about what sets a fresh CS grad with no experience apart from those with a non-CS degree but with some IT experience.

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