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Cellphones

BioShock Coming To Cell Phones 20

Posted by Soulskill from the look-at-little-sister dept.
Pocket Gamer reports that a development studio called Indiagames is working on two separate licensed versions of BioShock for mobile devices. A video was shown for the familiar-looking 3D version, and they're doing a 2D adaptation as well. Indiagames' Sean Malatesta said it was in the final approval stages, and that "our guys and 2K have really captured the essence of the game in a 2D format. It's really unbelievable. It obviously doesn't look like BioShock as you know it, but it gives you the same essence. The guys are pretty proud of it."
Image

Dutch City Fears Loss of Pornography Archive Screenshot-sm 61

Posted by samzenpus from the oh-the-humnaity dept.
The Dutch city of Leeuwarden has lost the municipal pornography archive and officials fear it may be gone forever. A spokesman for the city said the collection may have been taken home "accidentally" by an employee or visitor. "We're hoping that someone will say 'Hey, I have that in my attic' and bring it back," he said Thursday. "No questions asked." Leeuwarden shouldn't be too upset. I've found it a good practice to get rid of your porn archive and rebuild every 6 months or so.
Movies

Gaming Netflix Ratings? 235

Posted by kdawson from the stadium-seated-astroturf dept.
Nom du Keyboard writes "Not for the first time, I've noticed a new film that hasn't yet even reached the theaters, yet has hundreds of positive votes and/or reviews recorded on Netflix. This time the movie is Inkheart. For a movie that doesn't even hit the theaters until January 23, it already has 428 votes and a rating of 4.3 (out of 5) on Netflix. Seems more than a bit fraudulent to me. Also, it has a review that doesn't even review the movie, but instead says the books are great, therefore the movie should be too. Does the word 'shills' come to mind? With millions spent to promote a movie, are a few hundred of that going to phony voters? Or have that many people actually seen the film and just can't wait to rush home and log onto Netflix to vote? Just what is Netflix's responsibility here to provide honest ratings?"
Networking

Ubuntu Download Speeds Beat Windows XP's 515

Posted by timothy from the aggregated-circumstances dept.
narramissic writes "Doing a download speed test of his Time Warner cable connection, James Gaskin discovered something odd, something that he is quick to note isn't a rigorous benchmarked lab test. The discovery: His Ubuntu machine 'returned a rating from the Bandwidth.com test of 22-25mbps over several tests' while the same test done from a Windows XP PC returned a rating of 12-14mbps. The two computers used in the test are 'almost identical: both off-lease Compaq small form factor D515s, part of the very popular corporate desktop D500 family. Both have Pentium 4 processors running at 2GHz. The Ubuntu machine has 768MB of RAM, while the XP box has only 512MB of RAM. Both run Firefox 3 as their browser.' Gaskin's question: Can a little extra RAM make that much difference in Internet download speeds or does Ubuntu handles networking that much faster than Windows XP?"
PlayStation (Games)

PS2 the Most Played Console In 2008 172

Posted by Soulskill from the helps-that-they-sold-140-million-of-them dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In terms of console usage, the aging PS2 still leads the competition, according to data from US research firm Nielsen. Data the company compiled between January and October 2008 shows that the PS2 commanded 31.7 percent of the total number of minutes spent playing consoles. Only 37.9 percent of play time took place on current-gen systems, with the Xbox 360 (17.2 percent) leading the Wii (13.4 percent) and the PS3 (7.3 percent). Users even spent more time playing on the original Xbox (9.7 percent) than the PS3, while Nintendo's GameCube (4.6 percent) wasn't far behind Sony's new console either." World of Warcraft once again topped the most-played PC game list by a large margin. Tetris was the top mobile game, followed by Bejeweled and Guitar Hero III.

Comment screeenshots (Score -1) 855

by Briden (#26280313) Attached to: Tales From the Support Crypt

I asked a customer to take a screenshot once. she took a picture of her screen with a digital camera, then printed the camera directly from the printer. then she faxed the printed picture to me.
Games

Is the Gaming PC Dead? 417

Posted by Soulskill from the no-way-dude-check-out-my-$8000-alienware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Rahul Sood, HP's CTO of gaming, argues that the days of a market that wants PCs running three $500 GPUs is history; he argues that it's really a tough or impossible sell. '... let's face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value. This is why you don't see ridiculous offerings like Quad SLI and 2-kilowatt power supplies coming from our company.' But don't the ideas of customization and market pricing for components tend to undercut that? Is the gaming PC dead?"
Programming

Comparison of Nine Ruby Implementations 75

Posted by timothy from the shades-of-corundum dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Zen and the Art of Programming published a new version of The Great Ruby Shootout, which was aimed at testing the performances of multiple Ruby implementations. On the benchmark table this time around are Ruby 1.8 (on GNU/Linux and Windows), Ruby 1.9 (aka Yarv), Ruby Enterprise Edition (aka REE), JRuby 1.1.6RC1, Rubinius, MagLev, MacRuby 0.3 and IronRuby. The results of this comprehensive comparison show that for this set of benchmarks, Ruby 1.9.1 is almost 5 times faster than the notoriously slow Ruby 1.8. Is Ruby finally going to be acceptably fast?"
Cellphones

Talk-Powered Cell Phones Won't Need Batteries 197

Posted by samzenpus from the talk-charging dept.
alphadogg writes "It's possible that in the future conversations on your cell phone could generate enough electrical power to run the phone, without batteries. That's one possible outcome of recent work by a team of Texas researchers, who appear to have discovered that by building a certain type of piezoelectric material to a specific thickness (about 21 nanometers, compared to a typical human hair of 100,000 nanometers), you can boost its energy production by 100 percent. And the technology could power not just phones, but a whole range of low-power mobile devices and sensors. The breakthrough is an example of 'energy harvesting' that can convert one kind of energy, such as vibrations or solar rays, into electricity."

Comment editors? (Score -1) 249

by Briden (#25976627) Attached to: Real-World Benchmarks of Ext4

is this sentence written properly? they conclude though that Ext4 is a nice upgrade over Ext3 due to the new features and just not improved performance in a few areas but its lifespan may be short with btrfs coming soon."
United States

Lessig Launches Open Transition Principles 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the change-is-coming-in-the-form-of-nickels-and-dimes dept.
soDean writes "The Principles for an Open Transition and a petition were co-launched by Lawrence Lessig, Mozilla, and the Participatory Culture Foundation today. This was in reaction to the announcement that Obama would be posting his transition videos to YouTube. The petition encourages Obama to publish his transition videos with open licenses, make them available for download, and preferably use royalty free/open video formats and standards. Unless YouTube makes some radical changes, the videos will need to be hosted elsewhere."
Sci-Fi

The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices 340

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the doom-proof dept.
Ostracus writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting summary of some of the best fictional doomsday devices. These devices have featured heavily in movies, television, and fiction; their list includes favorites from Dr. Strangelove to Futurama. What devices have they missed? "By the time Futurama's sci-fi satire hit the scene, creator Matt Groening had the doomsday-device shtick down. Case in point: the Spheroboom. This highly explosive space/time-bending device isn't just the prized jewel of the show's mad scientist, Professor Farnsworth. It also destroys anyone/anything not wearing a 'Doom-proof Platinum Vest.'"
Windows

Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds 326

Posted by timothy from the says-them dept.
arcticstoat writes "Asus' budget motherboard wing, ASRock, claims that it's found a way to load a clean boot of Windows from a full shut down in just four seconds, using its new Instant Boot technology. The technology takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows respectively. However, by calling them at different times in the boot-up and shutdown process, Instant Boot enables you to boot up to your Windows desktop in three to four seconds, even after a proper shut down. Two modes are available; Fast mode, which uses S3 and boots up in around four seconds, and Regular Mode, which uses S4 and apparently takes between 20 and 22 seconds to boot. The advantage of Instant Boot when compared with normal Sleep and Hibernation modes is that you get the advantage of a clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls 'accumulated garbage data,' and you also get the security of knowing that you won't lose any data if there's a power cut and you lose AC power. There's also a video of it in action at the link above."

Comment why do people buy shitty products? (Score -1) 263

by Briden (#25647675) Attached to: New "MP3 100% Compatible" Logo For DRM-Free Music
I always find it interesting to know that a lot of people seem to take the "default" route and go with mp3 providers that use this sort of crap. I buy my tunes off DJ specific websites like:

I've never once had an mp3 delivered in anything but it's pure non drm laden form. also available are .wav and .flac, multiple bitrates, package deals etc. It stuns me that people would actually pay for such files from the likes of microsoft or apple, why?

I guess DJ specific music has to be provided this way(i would never accept any limitations on my files as a DJ such as not being able to burn or transfer them between machines, this is essential to our work), but is it really impossible to purchase something like a beatles boxed set from other sources than itunes?

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