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Comment Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score 1) 738

by xororand (#30084544) Attached to: Microsoft Disconnects Modded Xbox Users

Hum. Out of curiosity, does the slashdot crowd think copying 30-40 games and "saving £600" is good? Wouldn't that actually be considered ... basically stealing?

Copyright infringement is not stealing.
Copyright infringement is not stealing.
Copyright infringement is not stealing.

Seriously, it is not, regardless of whatever your opinion of copyright infringement is, it is not stealing.

Comment Re:Flash security has always frightened me (Score 1) 355

by RAMMS+EIN (#30084370) Attached to: Flash Vulnerability Found, Adobe Says No Fix Forthcoming

``Browser vendors have the right incentives because users have a realistic choice of browsers. Flash is an all-or-nothing affair.''

And that is a real problem for users, and not just because of its effect on security. Only Adobe makes software that can handle all the Flash applets out there, and anytime there is only a single supplier, the incentives to make things better for customers aren't there. Adobe has been pretty nice with Flash, considering.

Comment Re:Go! (Score 1) 512

by dave87656 (#30084256) Attached to: Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go"

Results in Google for go programming language [google.com] are about the existing Go! language and the main developers book about it.

Maybe they Bing'd it. Since Microsoft manipulates their search results, maybe Bing came back with a bunch of links telling them to "Go to Microsoft", "Go Use Windows", "Go Updage to Windows 7" and so on. ;-)
Games

Should Computer Games Adapt To the Way You Play? 404

Posted by Soulskill from the worked-for-commander-data dept.
jtogel writes "Many games use 'rubberbanding' to adapt to your skill level, making the game harder if you're a better player and easier if you're not. Just think of Mario Kart and the obvious ways it punishes you for driving too well by giving the people who are hopelessly behind you super-weapons to smack you with. It's also very common to just increase the skill of the NPCs as you get better — see Oblivion. In my research group, we are working on slightly more sophisticated ways to adapt the game to you, including generating new level elements (PDF) based on your playing style (PDF). Now, the question becomes: is this a good thing at all? Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well). Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer. But still, game players have very different skill levels and skill sets when they come to a game, and we would like to cater to them all. And if you don't see playing skill as one-dimensional, maybe it's possible to do meaningful adaptation. What sort of game adaptation would you like to see?"

Comment Way less than microwatt (Score 1) 96

by Danh (#28986843) Attached to: Sticky Tape Found To Emit Terahertz Radiation

A microwatt terahertz radiation would be a great thing. That made me check their paper. In the Optics Letters the authors just write they had " 1 microwatt", which became "about a microwatt of power" in the linked blog. The maximum really measured was just 0.1 nW. Even assuming that they can focus only 1% of the THz radiation on the detector (I didn't find them specifying it) it seems to be *much* less than 1 microwatt.
Microsoft

Office 2007SP2 ODF Interoperability Very Bad 627

Posted by CmdrTaco from the are-you-really-surprised dept.
David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won't read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."
Utilities (Apple)

Submission + - SPAM: Face Cosmetic Surgery

Submitted by
Nouvellen
Nouvellen writes: "Imagine that you can wear your make up day and night without any hassle and wasting time and doing make up for hours and hour. Now you don't have to do make up every time when you have go out or something. With Face Cosmetic Surgery you can wear your make up from night to day and that to every day."
Link to Original Source
Media

Player Piano Roll Production Ceases 117

Posted by kdawson from the day-the-music-died dept.
boustrophedon writes "The Buffalo News reports that QRS Music Technologies halted production of player piano rolls 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago. QRS continues to make digitized and computerized player-piano technology that runs on CDs. 'We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for pianos that play themselves. It's just the technology that has changed. But I would be lying to say [the halting of production] doesn't sadden me,' said Bob Berkman, the company's music director. Piano rolls can last for decades, but not forever. Volunteers at the International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists build piano-roll scanners to scan rolls optically and convert them to MIDI files. The IAMMP archive and others contain thousands of scanned rolls."

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