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The Almighty Buck

Monkey Business and Freakonomics 182

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cashing-out-in-banana-chips dept.
marct22 writes "Stephen J Dubner, co-writer of 'Freakonomics' said there will be a second Freakonomics book. One of the items that will be covered is capuchin monkeys' use of washers as money, buying sweets, budgeting for favored treats over lesser treats. He mentioned that one of the experiments had similar outcomes as a study of day traders. And lastly, he watched capuchin prostitution!"
Editorial

Submission + - How The Video Game Industry Lost Its Soul

Submitted by
JordanL
JordanL writes: "I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the inner workings of the large variety of professions that video game development and sales includes, but I contend that it no longer takes an expert to make the assertion that I have come to recently: the video game industry as a whole is losing its soul, and while it may be able to end-over-end continue to raise profits, it will on the long term lose the respectability and clout that it deserves if they continue on their current course."

Feed Gay Men Have Higher Prevalence Of Eating Disorders (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Gay and bisexual men may be at far higher risk for eating disorders than heterosexual men, according to a recent study. In the first population-based study of its kind, researchers found that gay and bisexual men have higher rates of eating disorders.

Feed BenQ's chairman and president charged in Taiwan, out on bail (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones

It doesn't look like the BenQ saga is showing any sings of letting up anytime soon, with two of the company's top executives now running into trouble with the law over alleged insider trading. According to The Taipei Times, both Chairman K.Y. Lee (who recently offered to leave the company) and President Sheaffer Lee have been named as defendants in the insider trading case against BenQ, which stems mainly from the company's mangled acquisition of Siemen AG's mobile phone business. Both men reportedly faced a grilling form prosecutors for some eight hours on Wednesday before being released on bail, at a cost of a couple of hundred thousand dollars apiece. Of course, these aren't the first charges to be laid against the company in the insider trading probe, with BenQ's CFO and senior VP Eric Yu still locked up after the last sweep by prosecutors. As if BenQ needed any more bad news, the company's shares unsurprisingly took a bit of a tumble after this latest development, adding further to the 20% loss the company has seen over the past three months.

[Via The Inquirer]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Games

'Games 3.0' Is Nothing New 41

Posted by Zonk from the been-making-things-for-a-while-now dept.
At Next Generation, author Matt Matthews points out that gamers have been 'making things' for a while now. Sony's Phil Harrison touted the 'Games 3.0' vision at his GDC keynote last month, saying that the new thing is gamers making their own entertainment and sharing it with others. "[Harrison's view] ignores an important fact: the tools of game creation have been given to players over and over again for almost a quarter of a century, since at least 1983. The lessons learned since then will be instructive as Sony again puts the players in control." He goes on to discuss titles like RPGMaker, Pinball Wizard, and some of the famous mods that have changed the industry.
United States

Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power 766

Posted by kdawson from the pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later dept.
Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."
Games

GameStop Theorizes Wii Shortage Deliberate 163

Posted by Zonk from the ruh-roh-raggy dept.
In GameStop's quarterly public conference call, company COO Dan DeMatteo called out Nintendo on what he sees as intentional supply shortages. Along with the news that the company hit $5.3 Billion in 2006, Next Gen reports that the call contained several remarks on the next gen systems. The Wii, Dematteo thinks, has been short supplied because 'they made their numbers for the year ... [Nintendo's] new year starts April 1st, and I think we're going to see supply flowing.' They also commented on the Euro launch of the PS3, with CEO R. Richard Fontaine saying, 'I think the summary of that was that it was a very good launch falling somewhat short of what [GameStop's Euro managing directors] would call a great launch.'
Google

Don't Google "How To Commit Murder" Before Killing 387

Posted by kdawson from the gods-themselves-contend-in-vain dept.
An anonymous reader alerts us to a murder trial in New Jersey in which Google and MSN searches were used against a woman accused of killing her husband. In the days before the murder, prosecutors say the defendant searched for "How To Commit Murder," "instant poisons," "undetectable poisons," "fatal digoxin doses," and gun laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her husband was killed with a gun procured in Pennsylvania. The crime occurred in 2004; of course, people now know to be careful about their searches.
Wii

Submission + - Open-source (S)NES controller to Wii adapter

Submitted by
Raphael
Raphael writes: "Being able to play NES and SNES games on the Wii's Virtual Console is great (Thanks Nintendo!), but it's much more fun to do it with the original controllers. (And some games are much more playable like this). That's why I decided to design this Nes/Snes controller to USB conversion circuit. http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/snes2wii/index _en.php"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Reflectivity Reaches a New Low

Submitted by
sporkme
sporkme writes: "A new nanocoating material developed by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the lowest level of reflectivity ever seen, or not seen in this case. The amount of light reflected by the composite of silica nanorods and aluminum nitride is almost the same amount reflected by air. From the article:

Schubert and his coworkers have created a material with a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported. Window glass, for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45.
. . .
Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.
Suggested applications include increased efficiency in solar cells, more energy-efficient lighting and advances in quantum mechanics. No word yet on invisibility cloaks."
Unix

Submission + - Complexity of Sendmail or Postfix Email server

Submitted by
kennova
kennova writes: "I have a question for Slashdot users. I have been using the eXtremail email server for many years now. It has been actively developed for a couple of years. This prompted a thought to change to something more mainstream.

However, the complexity of Sendmail or Postfix is so daunting, and non-sensical that I have attempted a few times without success. Is there a simple email server that a home user can use, that supports Smarthosting, domain catch-all addresses, and adding users and multiple domains without setting up so much overhead that if you lose it, you pretty much have to start all over.

I don't care about Spam filters, or web-mail, or all that other garbage, GMail does that for me. The infrastructure of these large email systems is too much for a simple home user who wants to enable the power of the web to his/her advantage. eXtremail did it, but no one else has been able to."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Jesus' tomb located

Submitted by
davo
davo writes: "A tomb that once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth — and those of his wife and son — has been found in a suburb of Jerusalem, said the makers of a controversial film in a press conference today. The filmmakers base their claims on the study of ten ossuaries — stone boxes used to hold the bones of the dead — that were unearthed at an Israeli construction site in 1980. Simcha Jacobovici, James Cameron, and others at a press conference revealing stone boxes they say once held the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene picture Inscriptions on the boxes, in addition to DNA tests of tiny bits of tissue found inside, suggest that the cave was the final resting place of Jesus, his disciple Mary Magdalene, and their son, the filmmakers said. The claims, if verified, could threaten key tenets of the Christian faith, most notably that Jesus never married or had children and that he was resurrected three days after his death. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0226-jesus-tomb.html?intcmp=March07"

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