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Submission + - After 15 years, community favourite Winamp is no more. (stereophile.com) 1

Submitted by georgeaperkins
georgeaperkins writes: Starting on December 20, 2013, Winamp will no longer be available for download. One of the most popular and influential media players during the 1990s, Nullsoft's Winamp played back mp3s for budding p2p pirates around the world.
Sorry to see it go — I fondly remember the thousands of community created skins (some better than others) and visualisations.

Submission + - Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Video gaming is a highly pervasive activity, providing a multitude of complex cognitive and motor demands. Gaming can be seen as an intense training of several skills. Associated cerebral structural plasticity induced has not been investigated so far. Comparing a control with a video gaming training group that was trained for 2 months for at least 30âmin per day with a platformer game, we found significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum in the training group.

Submission + - Netflix is getting a new makover (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by Sla$hPot
Sla$hPot writes: The makeover affects all platforms, from TV's, set-top boxes, consoles browsers.
Earlier this year Netflix told us about the change from Silverlight to HTML5.
But what are the technical details about their latest move?

Submission + - How Is Data Recovered From A Dead Hard Drive?

Submitted by liwee
liwee writes: Quote: "In a blind panic, I called the biggest name in disk disaster recovery, Seagate Recovery Services, and in the process stumbled into a fascinating photo story. What follows is not meant to be a commercial for Seagate. The company did not pay for this coverage. The Tom’s Hardware editors and I simply recognized that a lot of people need recovery help, and a glimpse behind the curtain at how those operations get done might be enlightening for consumers and business users alike."

Submission + - Lost at 40s: How to be a better me? 1

Submitted by SuperAnonimo
SuperAnonimo writes: Hello all. I’m an IT guy. I understand hardware, networks, telephony, etc. But I’m not an expert on any of them, meaning, I can work and understand any of the technologies at different levels of complexity, but I’m not an expert on them, and in general I find them boring.
What I really like, is software developing, which I started with logo at the age of 6, then moved to QBasic, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and Lotus Notes, while in the middle learning whatever language was required by my university: a little bit of C, Visual FoxPro, Cobol, Assembler, Visual Basic and Java. I even tried learning HTML/CSS but never got to finish.

Now, because of a series of misfortunes and/or miss decisions, I ended up truly “mastering” two platforms that never really catched on, or at least not as much as I like: Delphi and Lotus Domino. Also, because of the same series of misfortunes and/or miss decisions, I never got to work on a developers group within the companies I worked at, so all my experience is from working alone, and more or less self-taught.

So now I’m at my 40s, and I want to have my skills updated as fast as possible, so that I can become a better developer, so that I can one day be developer’s manager/lead, or a more interesting developer, so that I can get a more senior job.

So what courses/lessons/books should I take to be a better developer? What courses/lessons/books should I take to know best developing practices? What courses/lessons/books should I take to be a “developer’s manager/lead”? What else should I learn to be a better developer in general?

If you were in my position, what other options would you consider? (I tried PM and didn’t like it by the way).

Also, I’m not from USA, as you can tell by my writing, so anything where I need to be there to take a class is normally a no.

And finally, while I’m interested on languages recommendations (C# since I know Delphi), I’m interested also on how to become a better programmer in general.

Sorry for the long post, but I’m really lost and want to be a better me to provide for my family!

THANKS A LOT!

Submission + - What To Do With Old Domains 3

Submitted by Jason Levine
Jason Levine writes: While looking to buy a new domain for a website idea I had, I realized that over the years I've purchased quite a few domain names. I'm not a domain hoarder by any stretch of the imagination, but 14 domains isn't a small number either. Of those domains, only 6 are actively being used. Many of the others were used for web projects that died out or that never launched. I could let the domains expire or possibly sell them (some might actually take in some cash), but I'm afraid of the domains being grabbed by spammers or other nefarious individuals. Holding onto them is an option, but increasingly I'm wondering why I'm paying annual fees for domain names that I'm not using and likely will never use again.

How do you handle old domain names in your possession that you no longer need?

Submission + - Portuguese Government Set on Increasing Use of Open Source (europa.eu)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: The government of Portugal wants to increase its use of open source ICT solutions and open ICT standards, aiming to rationalise its IT and reduce costs. A pilot by Portugal's General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC) shows that a switch can cut IT costs by half (to 169,000 from 329,000 euro per year) and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 84 %, including an estimate of the cost of licences.

Submission + - Bitcoin Falls 15% Following FBI's Silk Road Seizure (blogspot.com.au)

Submitted by quantr
quantr writes: Bitcoin is taking it on the chin following the FBI seizure of Silk Road, a popular – and partially hidden – marketplace for drugs and other items generally outside the orbit of the law. As TechCrunch reported earlier today, about $1.2 billion in Bitcoin flowed through Silk Road, resulting in a nearly $80 million commission for the service.

Bitcoin is responding as you would expect, as a core market that accepted it has been taken down, the federal government hemming in on its slice of the web: By rapidly shedding value.

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