Snad - Slashdot User

Submission + - Is MS gaming live.com referrals? (nfggames.com)

Submitted by

NEOGEOman

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:26PM

NEOGEOman writes: "In the last three days live.com has suddenly started appearing on my referral logs thirty times more frequently than they used to (a whopping 31 visitors per day now!). The thing is the search terms are almost certainly bogus. What human being would search for 'newest' or 'message' and find my tiny site among twenty three million results? All the visitors' IPs resolve to the domain *.phx.gbl, which seems to be some non-standard Microsoft thing. Google returns a lot of hits for it in discussion of all things Microsoft. My question now is: Am I the only one noticing this? Is there a legitimate reason for this increase in ridiculous traffic? To the point, is Microsoft gaming the system to make live.com more relevent?"

Submission + - Body heat touted as power source (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

StonyandCher

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:21PM

StonyandCher writes: "German scientists claim to have a developed a procedure that harnesses body heat in order to generate power, which in the future may be used to power mobile devices."

Submission + - Computers Find False Aliens? (astrobio.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: Astrobiology Magazine has interviewed Frank Drake, the creator of the Drake Equation which estimates the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. He notes that potential alien signals detected by automated SETI programs have a problem — with no one there to conduct immediate follow-up studies, the source of one-time signals can't be identified: "The long Harvard search of Horowitz and Sagan observed more than thirty signals that had the earmark of an extraterrestrial signal. The SETI@Home program has observed more than a hundred such signals. Both of these programs are automated, though, so no one was there at the time to do immediate follow-up observations. Researchers later tried to detect these signals, but, as with the Wow signal, they've been unsuccessful. So the origin of these signals is an open question. Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute also has found many good candidates, but that program could immediately determine the origin of the signal and all of them turned out to be of human origin. It may be that all the potential signals detected so far were generated by humans."

Submission + - Ultimate Censorship? China and Reincarnation.

Submitted by

michaelcole

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:00PM

michaelcole writes: ":
"China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission"
— http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek /

This article is both hilarious and sad, looking at the lengths to which a government will go to regulate thought through censorship. It also goes into some of the more subtle politics of the current 72 year-old Dalai Lama as he thinks about his political and spiritual successor.

The Dalai Lama's response: "he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control.""

Submission + - The History of the Nintedo Family Computer (4colorrebellion.com)

Submitted by

neil_beforezod

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @06:56PM

neil_beforezod writes: "Two well regarded gaming blogs, 4colorrebellion and Powet.tv, have joined forces to tell the story of the revolutionary console that helped revived gaming: the Nintendo Family Computer or the Famicom. The Famicom, the older brother to the NES, may never have been release in the U.S. nor have every reached the fame of its younger brother, but it's presence had everlasting effects on what the gaming industry is today."

Submission + - Apple now sells more than one in six laptops (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:35PM

Lucas123 writes: "Apple's share of the laptop market has grown greatly over the past few years and the company is now beating Gateway in sales, according research firm NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, N.Y. "Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace," the firm stated. Apple is now in third place behind HP and Toshiba, and their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace. Next on Apple's plate: a totally refreshed iPod, NPD says."

Submission + - $1.4m IBM Server Falls Off Truck (informationweek.com) 2

Submitted by

mytrip

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:34PM

mytrip writes: "An IBM server worth $1.4 million was wrecked after it fell off a forklift during shipping. Now the customer is suing ... "As a result of the rocking motion, the base of the pallet and the crate broke and the crate fell onto the curb, damaging the server packed inside," the contractor states in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.

That would be federal contractor T.R. Systems, which claims that IBM is responsible for mispackaging the machine, and that Big Blue won't accept returns. This forced them to buy another one.

It certainly puts all those "Best Buy won't let me return a lemon laptop" stories in perspective, eh?"

Submission + - CNET 1997: Java is Dead! (java.net)

Submitted by

porkrind

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:28PM

porkrind writes: "David Herron has a great post on his blog at java.net. David uncovered an old CNET article listing 10 technologies that "don't stand a chance" with Java, of course, being one. It would seem that the death of Java has been foretold multiple times for at least 10 years now. One wonders how long it needs to survive before someone admits, "well, perhaps this Java thing will make it after all.""

Submission + - Gaming in Libraries (oedb.org)

Submitted by ftblguy on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:02PM

ftblguy writes: Believe it or not, gaming has been gaining momentum in library communities for a while now. From the Chicago Tribune: "'Gaming teaches how to evaluate information,' said Jenny Levine, Internet specialist for the American Library Association. 'It teaches how to handle large sets of data, filter results, navigate information. You take in a lot of real-time information, process it and strategize. These are the same skills that businesses need.'" iLibrarian has a quick guide to gaming in libraries that links to several resources on this topic: "We are seeing gaming presentations at library conferences such as ALA Annual and Computers in Libraries, as well as entire symposiums dedicated to the theme..."

Submission + - Girl's heart regenerates due to artificial assist (www.cbc.ca) 1

Submitted by

Socguy

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:38PM

Socguy writes: "A 15-year-old girl has become the first Canadian to have an artificial heart removed after her own heart healed itself.
Doctors at the Stollery Children's hospital implanted the Berlin Heart, a portable mechanical device that keeps blood pumping in an ailing heart, so she could survive until a transplant became available.
But over the next few months, Melissa's overall condition improved dramatically, and her heart muscle regained much of its strength. After 146 days on the Berlin Heart, Melissa underwent surgery to have the device removed.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/08/28/ artificial-heart.html"

Submission + - Beijing police launch Web patrols

Submitted by

mernil

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @03:48PM

mernil writes: "Police in China's capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user's browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content. Starting Sept. 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China's top portals, including Sohu and Sina, and by the end of the year will appear on all Web sites registered with Beijing servers, the Beijing Public Security Ministry said in a statement. China stringently polices the Internet for material and content that the ruling Communist Party finds politically or morally threatening."

Submission + - The Stupendous Richard Mille Tellurium-Planetariu (watchluxus.com)

Submitted by

Yizhi Sun

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:25AM

Yizhi Sun writes: "In our quest to better understand the world in which we live, planetariums have flourished with it estimated that there is one planetarium per 100,000 population in the US alone. At its simplest, a planetarium is an apparatus or model representing the planetary system — the movements of the sun, earth, moon and planets as well as other types of astronomic occurrences. From the earliest times of civilization, man has attempted to duplicate the surrounding visible celestial universe. However, the development of the clockwork driven planetarium or tellurium that could show the movements of heavenly bodies automatically — without manual intervention — had to wait until the appearance of newer and more accurate types of escapements that evolved during the course of the 17th century. Now, Richard Mille has made a contribution to the development of the Planetarium-Tellurium with a rare and unique Planetarium, containing a vast number of extremely precise indications and astronomic representations within the limits of mechanical design. It was developed to be effective and practical in daily use with the possibility of corrections for different time zones and ease of setting, all of which is executed with workmanship of an extraordinarily high level. All these conditions mean that it is an extremely difficult object to create, and thus a rarity. For this reason more than 10 years have been necessary for the development of the Richard Mille Planetarium-Tellurium."

Submission + - Denmark rejects OOXML (newz.dk)

Submitted by

Anders Berggreen

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:51AM

Anders Berggreen writes: "The danish standardization-organisation "Dansk Standard" has rejected OOXML as an open standard. Sorry for now no english-language source on this story. http://newz.dk/danmark-siger-nej-til-ooxml"

Submission + - Developing Databases in Developing Countries (fromthehorizon.com)

Submitted by

Michael

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:15AM

Michael writes: "Developing Databases for Disasters in Developing Countries is a paper presented at the ISCRAM China Workshop based on my experiences developing and implementing databases for International Non Government Organizations (INGOs) in Indonesia after the 2004 Tsunami, Pakistan after the 2005 Earthquake and in Uganda. It discusses a number of observations and issues regarding wider information systems, data entry models, stakeholder participation and Head Office involvement."

Submission + - First time player wins Australian C&C3 WCG tit (raymonscott.com)

Submitted by

smileytshirt

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @02:28AM

smileytshirt writes: "From an article on smh.com.au:

When Fabian Baumann entered the Olympics of video games over the weekend, he intended only to watch.

Little did he know he would walk away with an all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle and the opportunity to represent Australia against the best in the world.

As a last-minute entrant to the Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars tournament at the national finals of the World Cyber Games, held at Luna Park, he first had to overcome one big issue: he had never played the game before."

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