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Submission + - Reddit javascript exploit spreads virally and caus (reddit.com)

Nithendil writes: "guyhersh from reddit.com describes the situation (warning: title NSFW): Based on what I've seen today, here's what went down. Reddit user Empirical wrote javascript code where if you copied and pasted it into the address bar, you would instantly spam that comment by replying to all the comments on the page and submitting it. Later xssfinder posted a proof of concept where if you hovered over a link, it would automatically run a Javascript. He then got the brilliant idea to combine the two together scripts together, and tested it here, and it spread from there.""

Submission + - StackOverflow For Any Topic (stackexchange.com)

RobinH writes: "The successful question and answer website for programmers, StackOverflow, is now over a year old, and the top user, Jon Skeet has just passed 100,000 reputation points. Now it looks like one of the creators of StackOverflow, Joel Spolsky, and his company Fog Creek, are developing a software as a service form of the StackOverflow engine called StackExchange to support any topic you want. The software is currently in private beta, but the first of the beta sites have surfaced. Topics include Business Travel, the Home, Parenthood, the Environment, Finance, and iPhone Game Development."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Why Games Cost $60 -- A View of the Pie (crispygamer.com)

eldavojohn writes: "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99 as did — by coincidence — the makers of Batman Arkham asylum? After all those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. David Thomas collects several interesting quotes in this article from organization leaders to lawyers. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience. Free-to-play, ad-supported models, too, diversify the price landscape.' For those of you PC gamers that catch deals on Steam, you may be all too familiar with the change that Mr. Halpin is forecasting — will we see this on consoles?"
Windows

Submission + - Ballmer: we screwed up Windows Mobile (pcpro.co.uk)

Barence writes: "Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has blasted the company's own mobile operating system at the firm's Venture Capital Summit. One tweet from an attendee claims Ballmer said the company had "screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already lauched WM7. They completely revamped the team". Another claims Ballmer said "we've pumped in some new talent. This will not happen again." It's not the first time Ballmer has attacked Windows Mobile, having publicly stated that version 6.5 was "not the full release we wanted"."
Image

Supermarket Bans Jedi Knight 169

The employees at Tesco seem to be immune to mind tricks, and have kicked out the founder of the International Church of Jediism. Daniel Jones, 23, who founded the religion based on the Star Wars movies, was asked to leave because his robes were against store rules which forbid the wearing of 'hoodies' in their premises. "I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave," he told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone." It's exactly this kind of stuff that turns young Jedis to the dark side.
Image

Barry White Music Gets Sharks in a Frenzy 15

Last month we ran a story about the Sea Life London Aquarium using Barry White music to convince their zebra shark Zorro to get romantic with their female shark. As crazy as it seems the plan worked, maybe too well. The aquarium is now warning guests about the shark's frisky frenzies as they are public, frequent and a little on the rough side. "We are absolutely delighted that Zorro is finally getting it together with his intended but the courtship rituals of the zebra shark can appear quite violent and some guests have been a little alarmed," says deputy curator Jamie Oliver.
Education

Crytek Giving Away CryEngine To UK Universities 67

GamesIndustry reports that German game developer Crytek will be making CryEngine, the game engine behind Far Cry and Aion, available to universities in the UK for free. They're doing so because they want new college grads to get hands-on experience with the technology that runs real games. Crytek's Karl Hilton said, "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are. It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a videogame. The more we can get involved with them and give them feedback and access to the tools involved, the more accurate the course will become in training people up."
Programming

Dirty Coding Tricks To Make a Deadline 683

Gamasutra is running an article with a collection of anecdotes from game developers who had to employ some quick and dirty fixes to get their products to ship on time. Here's a brief excerpt: "Back at [company X] — I think it was near the end of [the project] — we had an object in one of the levels that needed to be hidden. We didn't want to re-export the level and we did not use checksum names. So right smack in the middle of the engine code we had something like the following. The game shipped with this in: if( level == 10 && object == 56 ) {HideObject();} Maybe a year later, an artist using our engine came to us very frustrated about why an object in their level was not showing up after exporting to what resolved to level 10. I wonder why?" Have you ever needed to insert terrible code to make something work at the last minute?
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Afterthoughts on Neverwinter Nights 2 series (bitmob.com)

Jason Wilson writes: "This is an debriefing piece on Obsidian Entertainment's Neverwinter Nights 2 series. Featuring Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart and Creative Director Chris Avellone and other Obsidian designers, the Q&A delves into the development and history of the series whose roots go back to Shattered Steel. The interview also goes into who developed the stories for the original campaign and the expansions, the addition of the party and overland map systems, the regrets the developers have about the final product, and how the lessons learned from the series apply to the developer's upcoming game, Alpha Protocol."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Poland photoshops black guy to white one (microsoft.com) 1

wanted writes: "If you look at Microsoft's Poland business solutions website you will probably not notice anything wrong with the main picture. However, when you compare it with the original English version, it clearly shows that someone decided showing black people in Poland is not going to be that convincing to business. They just photoshopped the head of the black guy with a white one, in an amateur style leaving his hand unchanged. There's also a mirror just in case."
The Courts

Submission + - DVD Piracy temporarily legal in UK now (tgdaily.com)

goombah99 writes: TGD Daily reports that due to a notification glitch dating back to 1984, the UK laws governing DVD piracy are said to be unenforceable until the European Union Commission can meet to accept the UK law. This is said to be unlikely to happen before 2010. The problem arose in 1984 and was repeated in 1990, when the laws governing pornography and DVD piracy in the UK were not, as required under the EU agreement, sent to the the EU commission for approval.
The Internet

Submission + - UK Officially Proposes to Cut-Off Internet Pirates (ispreview.co.uk)

MJackson writes: "The UK government has officially proposed an amendment to its Digital Britain report, which would include the controversial measure of suspending illegal file sharers from their ISP. The disconnection proposal was originally ruled out in favour of letter warnings and technical measures (service speed reductions, website blocks etc.). That followed several years of largely unproductive wrangling between consumer groups, ISPs and Rights Holders. Law firms currently track suspected illegal P2P activity by monitoring IP addresses, which are assigned to every computer when you go online, yet IP's can easily be spoofed, redirected, shared over big networks or even hijacked (open Wi-Fi etc.). The download itself could also be encrypted, making it nearly impossible for the ISP to verify; but of course the UK has ignored all that."
Movies

Submission + - SPAM: Avatar: has sci-fi found its Heaven's Gate?

brumgrunt writes: "Den Of Geek wonders if James Cameron's Avatar is heading for a fall, and if it will even be a science fiction film, off the back of the previews shown last week. It writes: "It seems in Avatar that all this gee-whiz science is merely there to draw the 'old crowd' in and provide some kind of rationale for a brightly-coloured fantasy-world which reflects the most emetic of the artwork plastered over teenage girls' MySpace pages" [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Google

Apple, Google, AT&T Respond To the FCC Over Google Voice 326

We've recently been following the FCC's inquiry into Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app. Apple, Google, and AT&T have all officially responded to the FCC's questions: Apple says they haven't actually rejected the app, they're just continuing to "study it," and that it may "alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging, and voicemail." The interesting bits of Google's response seem to have been redacted, but they talk a little about the approval process for the Android platform. AT&T claims it had "no role" in the app's rejection and notes that there are no contractual provisions between the two companies for the consideration of individual apps. Reader ZuchinniOne points out a report in The Consumerist analyzing some of the statements made in these filings, as well as TechCrunch's look into the veracity of their claims.

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