Tangent128 - Slashdot User

Wii Shortages Costing Nintendo 'A Billion' In Sales 290

Posted by Zonk on Monday December 17, 2007 @01:11PM from the less-than-a-hojillion-but-still-frustrating dept.

A New York Times article from this past Friday highlights the 'problem' that Nintendo is facing: more people want to give them money than they can handle. Analysts quoted in the story discussing Nintendo's unique Wii shortage problem indicate that the company could be selling twice the 1.8 million consoles a month it ships. All told, these same individuals believe the company could be leaving as much as $1 billion on the table this holiday season. "'We don't feel like we've made any mistakes,' said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. He said there was a shortage because the company must plan its production schedule five months ahead, and projecting future demand is difficult. He added that there had been a worldwide shortage of disk drives that had hurt Nintendo as well as makers of many other devices. 'It's a good problem to have,' Mr. Harrison said of the demand, but he acknowledged that there could be a downside. 'We do worry about not satisfying consumers and that they will drift to a competitor's system.'"

Submission + - Student given detention for using Firefox 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 17, 2007 @12:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: Several sites are reporting that a student has been given detention for using "Firefox.exe" to do his classwork. No, really. The student was in class, working on an assignment that necessitated using a browser. The teacher instructed him to stop using Firefox and to do his classwork, to which the student responded that he was doing his classwork using a "better" browser (it is unclear whether the computer was the student's own computer or not). The clueless teacher (who called the rogue program "Firefox.exe") ordered him to detention.

Submission + - What should modern copyright law look like? 1

Submitted by umStefa on Friday December 14, 2007 @02:20PM

umStefa writes: The Canadian government recently withdrew its plan to introduce a DMCA style bill due to public protest. The intent to introduce some sort of legislation still exists, so what should it look like? What rights should customers have and what rights should the corporations have? It would be naive to think that no copyright can exist, so what is the fair balance?

Submission + - The Semantic Web Is Doomed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 14, 2007 @01:43PM

An anonymous reader writes: In his article "Is the Semantic Web Doomed?" Chris Minnick argues that the likelihood of a Semantic Web, as described by Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium, is highly unrealistic. While admitting the benefits are worth pursuing, Minnick's overall stance on the Semantic Web's realization is pessimistic, and he instead argues that it will live and die in the "ivory towers of the W3C" and never make it to the development community. Putting down the capabilities of today's developers, he adamantly claims, "It might just be that we aren't smart enough, organized enough, trusting enough, or far-sighted enough to actually implement the Semantic Web."

Submission + - T-Mobile Blocking Twitter? (alternageek.com)

Submitted by

bblboy54

on Friday December 14, 2007 @11:50AM

bblboy54 writes: "While there isn't any (published) official word from T-Mobile or from Twitter, it appears that T-Mobile has begun blocking users from sending SMS messages to the Twitter service. There are a few blog posts popping up regarding this including one over at Alternageek. I personally called T-Mobile last night and spoke with 3 different representatives before finally being told that "T-Mobile does not support third party message providers and while you were able to use the Twitter service previously, this was the result of a bug in their system which has now been corrected." When I specifically asked if I could expect to ever be able to use Twitter with T-Mobile again I was told that it wouldn't occur until Twitter made a contract with T-Mobile (the same mentality that ISPs are using to destroy net neutrality). This can be confirmed by asking anyone on T-Mobile to send an SMS to the Twitter short code (40404) and they will most likely receive a service is unavailable message which has been the result for the last 3 days."

Submission + - Canadian Graphic Novelist launches new webcomic (girlamatic.com)

Submitted by

Von Allan

on Friday December 14, 2007 @10:55AM

Von Allan writes: "I'm an Ottawa, Ontario based comics artist and my first book, "the road to god knows...," has been picked up by publisher GirlAMatic.com for web serialization. The full press release is below.

Von Allan published by webcomics site Girlamatic.com

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (December 14, 2007) — Webcomics have, over the past ten years, become a phenomenon and are read by people of all ages. This popularity has greatly increased both the diversity and sheer amount of high quality comics that might not have been able to find an audience in a traditional print format. Coinciding with this growth has been the development of a number of webcomic publishing sites that collect similarly themed webcomics under one roof. One of the most notable is GirlAMatic.com, primarily due to its focus on comics that would appeal to female readers both young and old. Canadian graphic novelist Von Allan's original graphic novel "the road to god knows..." has recently been accepted into GirlAMatic.com and launched as a webcomic on December 3rd, 2007. The story will update four times per week (Monday through Thursday).

"Comics are a wonderful and diverse medium that can showcase stories from any particular genre. This is often forgotten due to the overwhelming market presence of both Marvel and DC's superhero comics in print format. As a result of this, comics have traditionally been considered a 'boys club'," says Allan. "Most comics, especially in North America, tended to exclude women and girls by creating characters and stories that few female readers would ever identify with. Which, of course, is an odd thing to say but it can still occur even in this day and age. GirlAMatic has tried very hard to change this by creating a home for stories that, while running the gamut in terms of genre, can all be considered female friendly. Webcomics have managed to become a great leveler when it comes to genre and it's fascinating to see how many readers of webcomics are female. When one combines that with the phenomenal growth of manga, driven primarily by female readers, comics of all forms are seeing a remarkable equalization in readership that they've never experienced before. And I'm pleased as punch to be a part of that."

"The road to god knows..." is the story of Marie, a young teenage girl coming to grips with her Mom's schizophrenia. As a result, she's struggling to grow up fast; wrestling with poverty, loneliness, and her Mom's illness every step of the way. Betty, Marie's Mom, can't help; she's living with an illness that's slowly getting worse and increasingly frightening. With her Mom absorbed in her own problems, Marie is essentially alone while she learns to deal with the chaos in her young life.

"The road to god knows..." is expected to be printed in 2008 and has an ISBN of 978-0-9781237-0-3.

About Von Allan: Von Allan was born red-headed and freckled in Arnprior, Ontario, just in time for Star Wars: A New Hope. The single child of two loving but troubled parents, Von split most of his childhood between their two homes and, consequently, spent a lot of time in the worlds of comics and wrestling. He managed Perfect Books, an independent bookstore in Ottawa, for many years while working on story ideas in his spare time; eventually, he decided to make the leap to a creative life, and "the road to god knows..." was the result. Additional information about the graphic novel can be found at www.vonallan.com.

About GirlAMatic: Launched on March 31st 2003, GirlAMatic.com has become the home for a variety of female-friendly webcomics. Perhaps more importantly, the site has been the home for multiple award winning comics creators, including Leigh Dragoon and Raina Telgemeier (Kim Yale Award Winner for Best New Female Talent 2006 and 2003 respectively), Hope Larson (Ignatz Award Winner 2006), and Donna Barr (Xeric Winner 2002).

Contact:

Von Allan
P.O. Box 20520, 390 Rideau Street,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. K1N 1A3
Email: von@vonallan.com
Phone: 613-236-9957

Girlamatic.com
Editor-in-Chief: Lisa R. Jonté
Email: gam.editor@gmail.com"

Submission + - Scribbles - simple drawing, unique UI (atebits.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday December 13, 2007 @10:45PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "This is the sort of app that would normally fly under everyone's radar, but it might be worth checking out. There are some pretty unique aspects to the user interface. It blurs the line between a bitmap and a vector drawing app... has stuff like a 3D layer UI (a first?), infinite canvas, scalable brushes, high-resolution export, super easy-to-use interface.

May the gods of slashdot bless me with a mention! Or, I guess at least I guess you (mr. editor) can check out the app."

Submission + - Does the nature of open source prevent innovation? (benshoemate.com)

Submitted by

Ben Shoemate

on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @11:21AM

Ben Shoemate writes: "Is the open source community capable of innovation? While Linux, Open Office, and Firefox have done a good job of replicating the functionality of their proprietary competition, they are essentially well done copies. Meanwhile, companies like Apple, a company that is incredible closed and secretive, has created one innovative product after another. Why is this? Do too many cooks spoil the open source stew? Do people save their really good ideas for patents, copyrights, and ultimately some plan for profit? Or is there a conservative nature to large crowds? Maybe the urge to contribute is so high, that people want to comment on areas even if they have no real expertise and point out all the reasons why an innovative or creative idea will fail. Thus open source innovation fights an uphill battle not present in a company like Apple."

Submission + - What Windows 7 Needs to Be Successful (osweekly.com) 1

Submitted by

WINMSFT

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @02:24AM

WINMSFT writes: "Microsoft needs to do a number of things correctly in order to succeed with Windows 7. This article lists, "Even as a Linux user, I will admit that Windows continues to have its familiarity and OEM options working in its favor. The single smartest thing Microsoft could do with Windows 7 would be to give users actual control over Windows managers. Seriously, let's connect some dots."

Submission + - Game systems and botnets (elwood.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08, 2007 @02:50AM

An anonymous reader writes: Speculation on the potential of botnet harvesting of modern video game consoles. From the article: These video game systems have evolved into sophisticated networked computers that people view as toys. And as a society, we don't take toys serious. But while these devices are disregarding out of hand, they have real use in some specialized computing tasks that are sought after by those with negative goals.

Submission + - Has JAVA reached a turning point?

Submitted by

proto

on Sunday November 25, 2007 @08:49PM

proto writes: "Many significant changes have taken place between the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernel. In comparing milestones, what important milestones has JAVA reached this year? The open source version is still being reviewed and the benefits of its use will not be known for a few months. What important feature or features does JAVA have now that it did not have before being opened sourced?"

Submission + - Internet to go down in 2010? (itwire.com)

Submitted by

WirePosted

on Sunday November 25, 2007 @07:29PM

WirePosted writes: "A new report from the Nemertes Research Group has studied the Internet's infrastructure and analyzed usage patterns to predict that Internet usage by consumers and corporations could 'outstrip network capacity' worldwide in just over two years, requiring massive financial investment. Will the Internet survive?"

Submission + - The Ten Worst Products Of All Time

Submitted by on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @01:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: CNET's running a funny article listing the ten most disastrous tech products, "the gadgets and concepts we felt really surpassed themselves in being utterly crapulous. Many of these travesties aimed to reinvent the wheel, but were plagued by huge dollops of fail." Products that made the list include Windows Vista, the Barcode Battler and of course the ill-fated Gizmondo.

Submission + - TV Hack vs. Hackers (internetevolution.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @01:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: TV news just doesn't understand the hacker culture. Or, at least, that's Jeff Moss' claim in his column "Deconstructing the Hacker Community." Moss, the founder of DEFCON, details the embarrassing flight (run away!) of Dateline NBC "reporter," Michelle Madigan, from DEFCON 15. Madigan had showed up at DEFCON, a highly publicized event held in a casino, in hopes of exposing the hacker community. She instead ended up fleeing the scene, becoming fodder for laughs on YouTube. The irony is, according to Moss, while these reporters are hell-bent on "outing" the already public hacker community, they are missing the opportunity to get the scoop on some huge and relatively unpublicized Web security stories — such as Fast Flux DNS and commoditized Web exploit packs.

Submission + - End to Stem Cell Harvesting Moral Debate In Sight 1

Submitted by MikShapi on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @01:17PM

MikShapi writes: This Just In: Skin Cells can now be turned back to Stem Cells. A genetic modification to four genes using a viral vector reverses differentiating, making the cells revert to a stem cell state, capable for becoming any other cell in the body. Published in Cell and Nature by teams of researchers from the universities of Kyoto and Wisconsin, implications range from uprooting the moral justification for the GWB veto to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research, to an important step in the engineering roadmap to end (involuntary) aging. And, lest it go unmentioned, should this technique be adopted, stem cells will henceforth be abundant, easier and cheaper to come by for research and therapeutic purposes.

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