Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Wifi works (Score 1) 1231

Wifi works after sleeping. Microphone boost is in my sound settings now. Eclipse isn't a 3 year old version anymore. Firefox 3.5 by default. OpenOffice 3.1. New Software Center is better than the old Add/Remove programs. Ubuntu one is cool - 2 GB online backup for everyone. This has been the best version of Ubuntu I have used (and I started at Edgy).

Comment Re:I call BS (Score 5, Informative) 607

According to this 5000 respondent survey the failure rate is 54.2%, but the article points out that over 30 million consoles have been sold. I would place little confidence in the 5000 person survey.

Actually, with a population of 30 million, you can be 99% confident of the result with a confidence interval of +-2% with a sample size of 4,160. Check these numbers here. This means you know with 99% confidence that the actual population failure rate is between 52.2% and 56.2%. Sample sizes don't need to be as large as most people think to produce statistically significant results. Of course, that calculation assumes a random sample from the population, whereas this was sampled only from readers of Game Informer. I could see an argument that the numbers are skewed by selection bias, but the sample size is large enough.

Comment Re:Well, it's about time (Score 1) 208

Runescape all-but eliminated real-world trading in a series of controversial updates that, among other things, made unbalanced trading impossible and removed some PVP combat. Trading was changed so that every trade needs to be equal (with a certain leeway determined by experience). A large PVP section was changed so players cannot attack each other, so killing a farmer and taking the gold from the ground was made much harder.
These changes have pretty much eliminated real-world trading, but with a cost. Many players left because of the radical changes it required in the game, and giving sizeable gifts to friends is now impossible.

Comment Re:The album used to be great.... (Score 1) 250

Green Day have made two concept albums recently: the great American Idiot, and 21st Century Breakdown, which I haven't picked up yet. American Idiot is best listened to as an entire album - you don't get the entire picture just listening to the singles. For example, there is a nice transition between Holiday and Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is impossible to notice listening to them alone.
Concept albums still exist, but they are fairly rare.
But even back in the 60's and 70's, concept albums weren't very prevalent. Albert King's amazing Born Under a Bad Sign from 1966 is literally a collection of singles. Led Zeppelin were supposedly the kings of 'album-oriented' rock, but their albums aren't concept albums at all.
Security

Submission + - P2P network exposes Obama's safehouse location (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: "The location of the safe house used in times of emergency for the First Family was leaked on a LimeWire file-sharing network recently, a fact revealed today to members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Along with the safe house location, the LimeWire networks also disclosed presidential motorcade routes, as well as sensitive but unclassified document that listed details on every nuclear facility in the country. Now lawmakers are considering a bill to ban P2P use on government, contractor networks."
Announcements

Submission + - Olivia Munn wants to star in your Star Wars film! (atom.com)

Kate writes: "G4's Olivia Munn is looking for one great Star Wars fan! Filmmakers are invited to pitch their best idea for a Star Wars fan film starring Olivia. Olivia and Atom.com will choose the best pitch and offer $5,000 to make the film — with Olivia as the star. Just share your pitch http://olivia.atom.com/ by Sept. 3 to enter the contest."
Robotics

Submission + - Robot attacks a Swedish factory technician

ziftyatl writes: The first shot in the robot rebellion and uprising may have happened in Sweden when a robot used to lift heavy rocks attacked a technician attempting to repair it. He thought he had cut off the power already and walked towards the machine thinking it was safe. However, as he approached it, the robot sprang to life and grabbed his head. The worker survived, but had four ribs broken and could have easily been killed in the incident. The company was fined 25,000 kronor ($3,000) for inadequate safety procedures.
Space

Submission + - Spacex completes qualifications of falcon 9 (spacefellowship.com)

xp65 writes: "Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the successful completion of qualification testing for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle first stage tank and interstage. Testing took place at SpaceX's Texas Test Site, a 300 acre structural and propulsion testing facility, located just outside of Waco, Texas. "Falcon 9 continues to pass qualification testing in preparation for its first flight, scheduled for 2009," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "All hardware was designed to be man-rated, and these tests confirm that SpaceX is one step closer to flying humans on the Falcon 9/Dragon system.""
Security

Submission + - SPAM: BBN turns up heat on language translation tech

coondoggie writes: "When it comes to translating languages in real time, BBN must speak the tongue as it netted a $14 million check from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week to continue developing its speech and text technology. BBN has now taken in over $30 million from DARPA over the past few years to fill out the agency's Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program. The goal of GALE is to translate and distill foreign language material (television shows and newspapers) in near real-time, highlight salient information, and store the results in a searchable database — all with more than 90% accuracy by the end of the program. Through this process, GALE would help U.S. analysts recognize critical information in foreign languages quickly so they could act on it in a timely fashion. During the first three years of the GALE program, BBN met or exceeded the accuracy goals for automatic translation of Arabic newswire text and broadcast news into English. Under this latest contract award, BBN will continue to work in Arabic from both speech and text sources to meet increasingly steep accuracy goals. BBN continues to work in Chinese under a separate award, the company said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Slashdot Top Deals

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Working...