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Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Unusual physics engine game ported to Linux (blogspot.com)

christian.einfeldt writes: "Halloween has come early for Linux-loving gamers in the form of the scary Penumbra game trilogy, which has just recently been ported natively to GNU-Linux by the manufacturer, Frictional Games. The Penumbra games, named Overture, Black Plague, and Requiem, respectively, are first person survival horror and physics puzzle games which challenge the player to survive in a mine in Greenland which has been taken over by a monstrous infection/demon/cthulhu-esque thing. The graphics, sounds, and plot are all admirable in a scary sort of way. The protagonist is an ordinary human with no particular powers at all, who fumbles around in the dark mine fighting zombified dogs or fleeing from infected humans. But the game is remarkable for its physics engine — rather than just bump and acquire, the player must use the mouse to physically turn knobs and open doors; and the player can grab and throw pretty much anything in the environment. The physics engine drives objects to fly and fall exactly as one would expect. The porting of a game with such a deft physics engine natively to Linux might be one of the most noteworthy events for GNU-Linux gamers since the 'World of Goo' Linux port."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - The Pirate Bay R.I.P. (betanews.com)

CrashNBrn writes: We have heard rumblings of The Pirate Bay going the way of the DoDo Bird. The possibility that the current owners were considering selling. This has indeed occurred.
According to BetaNews, "Wayne Rosso, former president of Grokster has been working with Global Gaming Factory X, the Swedish firm that recently bought the Pirate Bay, to turn the service legit and legal without changing the user experience at all."
Rosso said, "I'm calling this new model 'resource supported'. In short, the more computer resources the user contributes to The Pirate Bay, the more his content consumption is subsidized. I won't drill down any further due to commercial confidentiality, but it can actually work. And if it does, it will be huge."

While the piratebay blog goes on to say, "If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And — you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us."

Color me skeptical, but it should certainly be interesting seeing the fallout from this.

The Internet

Submission + - New Zealand proposes new 3 strikes law for P2P (arstechnica.com)

suraj.sun writes: On the hill of Australian ( http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/15/1251201/Australia-Considering-P2P-Three-Strikes-Law ) and renewed French ( http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/12/0111247/French-3-Strikes-Law-Returns-In-Slightly-Altered-Form ) 3-strikes laws, New Zealand proposes new 3-strikes process for P2P users.

New Zealand's last attempt at forcing through a "graduated response law" to disconnect repeat online copyright infringers ended in failure as the government withdrew the plan. After some thoughtful work on the idea, the government is back with a revised proposal, and it wants to hear from the public.

Given the rancorous debate over the subject, the government scrapped its law earlier this year ( http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/3-strikes-strikes-out-in-nz-as-government-yanks-law.ars ) and went back to the drawing board. It convened a working group of "intellectual property and Internet law experts" to advise it on a fair solution to the problem of repeated online copyright infringement. That group has now concluded its work, and New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development yesterday issued its policy proposal ( PDF : http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/68683/proposal-document.pdf ) for public comment.

Under the government's new plan, Internet disconnection remains on the table, as do fines. But the plan also gives those accused of infringement more power to contest the claims, to use mediation, and to (possibly) appeal penalties to the regular legal system.

ARS Technica : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/new-zealand-proposes-new-3-strikes-process-for-p2p-users.ars

The Internet

Submission + - Australia could get 3 strikes piracy law too

syousef writes: Reported today in the Sydney Morning Herald is news that often criticised Federal Minister for Broadband Stephen Conroy is considering introducing 3 strikes legislation for Internet piracy. Not content with the lack of popularity of his censorship trials, it seems he's waiting on the outcome of a court case against Internet Service Provider iiNet who are being sued for not kicking off alleged file sharers. If iiNet don't lose and no precedent is set for kicking off file sharers, he's indicated that he will seek to do it legislatively. It appears he has not addressed the usual issues of accused Internet users being unable to defend themselves.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - iPhone apps that are spying on you...

0th3lo writes: "An example is the iPhone application "Aussie Rules LIVE" currently listed at number 23 on the AppStore Top 25. This application sends your iPhone ID, model, O.S Version, if your phone is jail broken, if the app is cracked and even your current latitude & longitude to a 3rd party. All this without your knowledge or consent. Worse still, this seems to be the norm for many, paid, full applications from the Apple AppStore. More information is on the main page of the blog at i-phone-home.blogspot.com , which is dedicated to iPhone applications that "phone-home"."
Space

Submission + - SpaceX Falcon 1 Flight 5 Successful (spacefellowship.com) 1

xp65 writes: "SpaceX Falcon 1 Flight 5 successfully launched their first payload into orbit. The payload was the Malaysian RazakSat satellite. The RazakSat satellite was originally named MACSAT (Medium-Sized Aperture Camera Satellite). It was a joint development program between Astronautic Technology (M) Sdn.Bhd. of Malaysia and SaTReCi to develop and validate technologies for a Near Equatorial Orbit remote sensing mini-satellite system to acquire medium high-resolution images. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American space-transportation startup company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk."
Space

Submission + - Futuristic 1946 Report on Future of Air Power (governmentattic.org)

An anonymous reader writes: During WWII, U.S. Army Air Forces Commanding General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, among others, saw that the future security of the United States — military supremacy — would depend upon scientific research and development. in 1944 Gen. Arnold directed Dr. Theodore von Kármán to: "investigate all the possibilities and desirabilities for postwar and future war's development as respect the AAF. Upon completion or your studies. please then give me a report or guide for recommended future AAF research and development programs."

The resulting multi-volume report, collectively titled: "Toward New Horizons," was hugely influential, even having been credited with leading to America's postwar airpower dominance.

Dr. Hsue-Shen Tsien Principal Author-Editor of the entire report series, later after returning to The People's Republic of China, was the founder of China's ballistic missile programs and became known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry".

Despite the great historical significance of this report, it is difficult to locate a library with a complete set of the volumes. The materials available here were painstakingly assembled through Interlibrary loan from a number of different libraries across the country

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Kevin Dallas on Windows Embedded (goodgearguide.com.au)

angry tapir writes: "Microsoft plans to use Windows Embedded to combat rival operating systems in smartbooks and a number of other devices meant to always be connected to the Internet that Microsoft calls CIDs, or consumer Internet devices. In this interview Kevin Dallas, the general manager of Microsoft's Windows Embedded business, discussed Microsoft's strategies for smartbooks and other devices, such as the company's Haiku concept device."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - No Shortage Of Jobs In IT Sector

Phoghat writes: "Kim Hart, of the Washington Post, reports http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071202016.html?wpisrc=newsletter there is no shortage of jobs in the IT sector. Platinum Solutions http://www.platinumsolutions.com/careers/ an IT firm Platinum Solutions, a Reston information technology firm that serves the government, needs to find new employees so fast that it hired four full-time recruiters. At any given time, the company has 20 to 40 job openings, and it recently opened an office in West Virginia that has 65 employees. "We're hiring as fast as we can," said chief executive Laila Rossi. "The past six months have been the peak for us.""
Space

Submission + - Tomorrow's Science Heroes?

An anonymous reader writes: As a kid (and still now) I was heavily influenced by Carl Sagan and a little later by Stephen Hawking. Now as I have started a family with two kids (currently age 5 and 2) I am wondering who out there is popularizing science. Currently, my wife and I can get the kids excited about the world around them, but I'd like to find someone inspiring from outside the family as they get older. Sure, we'll always have 'Cosmos,' but are there any contemporaries who are trying to bring science into the public view in such a fun and intriguing way? Someone the kids can look up to and be inspired by? Where is the next Science hero?
NASA

Submission + - NASA: De-Orbit the ISS in 2016 1

NewbieV writes: "From a story in Monday's Washington Post:

The international space station is by far the largest spacecraft ever built by earthlings. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it often passes over North America and is visible from the ground when night has fallen but the station, up high, is still bathed in sunlight.
After more than a decade of construction, it is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.
And then?
"In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft," says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.

"
Upgrades

Submission + - Ubuntu with Ext3 is Faster than Windows 7 and XP (flexense.com)

twitter writes: "Slashdot has reported questions about the performance of Windows 7 and comparisons to Ubuntu in general tests. At the time, people claimed that XP was faster than both and that Windows 7 just needed some work. Another study now shows that Ubuntu wipes both XP and Windows 7 in a key area, file service.

Abundant performance delivered by today's quad-core processors has shifted the performance bottleneck from the CPU and memory to the disk I/O subsystem in most of day-to-day usage scenarios. ... which one of modern operating systems is capable of utilizing fast hard drives and multi-core CPUs most effectively?

In all file search, classification and storage utilization analysis operations Ubuntu is faster than both tested Windows operating systems by a huge margin. ... users and IT professionals constantly working with large amounts data should seriously consider using Ubuntu Linux as the main file and data management platform.

I doubt any of this change by the promissed October 22 release date and don't know why people still use XP."

Privacy

Submission + - How Google is Trying to Undermine Internet Privacy

An anonymous reader writes: Great article recently published by the University of San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Journal (Author: Tim Wafa, J.D. Loyola Law School & BSCE Santa Clara University) on how Google's push for the APEC Privacy Framework is an attempt to undermine Internet Privacy Rights.
The article can be found at http://works.bepress.com/tim_wafa/1/

SOME INTERESTING HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARTICLE:
"APEC would give private corporations carte blanche to exploit private user data through an overly flexible self-regulated interpretive system and would provide no mechanism for oversight."

"In the winter of 2006, a wireless hacker pled guilty when his Google searches were used as evidence against him. The defendant ran a Google search over the network using the following search terms: "how to broadcast interference over wifi 2.4 GHZ," "interference over wifi 2.4 Ghz," "wireless networks 2.4 interference," and "make device interfere wireless network." While court papers did not describe how the FBI obtained his searches (e.g. through a seized hard-drive or directly from the search-engine), Google has indicated that it has the ability to provide search terms to law enforcement if given an Internet address or Web cookie. In 2005, prosecutors in a North Carolina murder case introduced as evidence search phrases pulled from a seized hard drive. The defendant was found guilty in part because he searched for the words "neck," "snap," "break," and "hold" before his wife was killed. Whether Internet users are aware of the broad implications that privacy infringement (in both the legal and normative sense) has and will continue to have on their daily lives is hard to gauge."

Comment Re:Most contractors are worthless (Score 1) 256

From my own experience as a contractor the only reason documentation is done is because the management doesn't want ot pay for it. On my current project we keep complaining there is no time allocated to documentation. I personally have been pushing for 6 months to update our documentation. Other divisions in our organisation are using our underdocumented software and we still can't convince them to do it. If the run out of money and can't pay us they are going to find that the have a huge chunk of useless software that no one knows how to use or maintain. Whenever I aks management says that there are other priorites and that some new feature was needed last week. What can you do?

dabrig

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