Comment Re:this just makes sense (Score 2, Insightful) 249
You just don't get it.
Submission + - NVIDIA Accused of Cheating with PhysX on GPU (pcper.com)
Vigile writes: When NVIDIA purchased AGEIA and corresponding PhysX hardware and software technology, it was quick to promise an implementation of physics acceleration on NVIDIA GPUs in the coming months. That has finally come to fruition with the latest beta driver but some in the industry were quick to accuse NVIDIA of cheating on some benchmarks. Since the PhysX GPU technology improves CPU performance scores in 3DMark Vantage the overall score is noticeably higher; but why is this considered cheating when the technology is also available to current and future games using PhysX APIs? PC Perspective has an editorial that analyzes the dispute and gets comments from not only NVIDIA and Futuremark but also AMD and Epic Games' Mark Rein.
Submission + - Hans Reiser visited in Jail by Wired.com (wired.com)
Fluffeh writes: "DUBLIN, California — Inside the Cellblock 9 visiting room here at Santa Rita Jail, inmate number BFPS63 looked like a man with a big hangover.
Hans Reiser may be confronting the reality that he could spend the rest of his life behind prison walls. The 44-year-old Linux programmer and developer of the ReiserFS filesystem was found guilty of first-degree murder on Monday in the disappearance of his wife. He faces a mandatory 25-to-life term."
Submission + - African Americans and the video game industry (intelligentgamer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: African Americans spend more money and time playing video games than whites, yet only 2% of game developers are black. This past week, MTV's Multiplayer blog interviewed 5 black game industry professionals for their perspective on race in the industry. Intelligent Gamer summarizes and highlights portions of this lengthy series of interviews.
Submission + - Slashdot Reverses Facts about Radiohead 1
Apro+im writes: The popular news aggregation website, Slashdot today reported that the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows was pirated more than it was procured via legitimate means, setting off a flurry of speculation on their online discussion board as to the implications of this "fact". Strangely overlooked in much of the discussion, however, was the fact that the article they linked contained the exact opposite information, stating:
Questions about what this implies about Slashdot's editorial practices and readership remain unanswered."The file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day — adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads. That's less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com"
Submission + - Microsoft Tax is 1/3 Price of French Laptop (heise.de) 1
kripkenstein writes: According to a recent court case in France, almost one third of the cost of a particular Acer laptop goes to Microsoft, while another portion goes to other software vendors:
In the ruling, Acer was forced to refund the cost of the software, which the purchaser returned and did not want. If this price ratio is representative of other computers, is the 'Windows Tax' even worse than previously speculated, especially with more expensive Microsoft OSes such as XP Professional or Vista Home Premium and above?The total of 311.85 euros of the overall purchase price of the notebook of 599 euros [...] was made up of 135.20 euros for Windows XP Home, 60 euros for Microsoft Works, 40.99 euros for PowerDVD, 38.66 euros for Norton Antivirus and 37 euros for NTI CD Maker.
Submission + - Designing software with Privacy in mind 6
dalektcalum writes: Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioner, recently gave a talk entitled Privacy by Design. The talk starts of by covering the basics of privacy, and privacy law, and then moves onto the important component, how to design software that properly protects users privacy. The majourity of the time is spent on design principles, but also examines specific technologies (such as Elliptical Curve Cryptography).
Submission + - Inside France's secret war (independent.co.uk) 1
MT writes: "For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator — and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur — seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields."
Submission + - Japanese Wikipedia 'editors' rapped by employer (scotsman.com) 1
sufijazz writes: "JAPAN'S agriculture ministry has reprimanded six bureaucrats for shirking their duties after an internal inquiry found that they had spent many work hours contributing to the Wiki-pedia website — including 260 entries about cartoon robots.
The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry."
The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry."
Submission + - Microsoft Seeks Patent for Spam-Fighting Lion
theodp writes: "Remember how the press gushed over Bill Gates' plans for a spam-less future? Well, some of the spam-fighting techniques are detailed in Microsoft's just-published patent application for Order-Based Human Interactive Proofs (HIPS), annoying little puzzles that are the CAPTCHAs of the future. As an example, Microsoft provides an exemplary maze through which a user must maneuver an object while avoiding things that human knowledge would indicate are dangerous, such as a canon and a lion. Choose path D-A-F-O-B-H-K to prove you're a Human and you get access to e-mail!"
Submission + - China blocking RSS feeds (arstechnica.com)
Phurge writes: Savvy Internet fans in the people's republic have known for a long time, however, that there have been simple ways to get forbidden information. One of those ways was the magical gift of Real Simple Syndication, or RSS. The Great Firewall can block specific web sites all it wants, but as long as there's an RSS feed, many Chinese surfers can use feeds to access otherwise forbidden information.
Unfortunately, China appears to have finally gotten wise to RSS as of late — reports have been popping up from our readers and around the web of not being able to access FeedBurner RSS feeds as early as August of this year. More recent reports tell us that the PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with "feeds," "rss," and "blog," thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites — including ones that aren't blocked in China, such as Ars Technica — useless.
Submission + - Two iPhone Class-Action Cases Emerge
An anonymous reader writes: Two new class-action cases against Apple are taking shape. The first involve the widely reported suit by Queens, NY woman Dongmei Li over the $200 iPhone price cut. Li's lawyer Jean Wang tells InfoWeek she's seeking to broaden the case. "I'm looking for a class action," Wang said. "Right now, I'm seeking as plaintiffs people just like Li, who feel their property was devalued. We're suing them not for lowering their prices, but for the various anti-trust violations that have resulted from them lowering their prices." The second case comes from California lawyer Damian Fernandez, who's looking for plaintiffs to join an iPhone warranty suit over iPhones that were "disabled, malfunctioned, or you had third-party applications erased after you downloaded iPhone update 1.1.1"
Submission + - Asian domain names up for grabs (crn.com.au)
negsss writes: "New .asia domain opens up for registration on Tuesday. The first round of the registration period for the new top-level .asia domain opens 9 October, promising organisations that are based in or trade with countries in that region a greater online presence"
Submission + - testing cmdrtaco test (cmdrtaco.net) 3
Anonymous Coward writes: "askjdllkjads ljksdakjldsakjl ajklsdakljadsjkl sdalkjdaskljlkdjsakjldasasd"
Submission + - Sony developing gigapixel imaging
holy_calamity writes: Sony and the University of Alabama are working on a gigapixel resolution camera for improved satellite surveillance. It can see 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. As well as removing annoying artefacts created by tiling images in Google Earth and similar, it should allow CCTV surveillance of entire cities with one camera. It does it with an array of chips that record small parts of the image and place them at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system.
