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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Censorship

AU Senator Calls Scientology a "Criminal Organization" 511

Posted by kdawson from the can't-do-that-here-either dept.
An anonymous reader passes along news that an Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, has denounced the Church of Scientology as "a criminal organization" from the floor of Parliament. "Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, and forced abortion. He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status." It wasn't that long ago that the CoS was calling for Net censorship in Australia; a month later the organization was convicted of fraud in France.

Comment Re:And then what? (Score 1) 580

by Mechanik (#29355321) Attached to: Apple Pulls C64 Emulator From the App Store
Actually I think that here in Canada, they also sold Commodores eventually. It's hard to find hard data to cite, but I think after they killed off the CoCos in 1991, they briefly had Commodores, until they switched to PCs. I have pretty distinct memories of having seen people do this prank out in front of a Radio Shack around here on a C64. If my memory is correct about this, then it would definitely not have been a very long time that they had them, because they were building PCs in 1992. But anyway, the joke still stands :-p

Comment Re:And then what? (Score 1) 580

by Mechanik (#29355297) Attached to: Apple Pulls C64 Emulator From the App Store

Actually I think that here in Canada, they also sold Commodores eventually. It's hard to find hard data to cite, but I think after they killed off the CoCos in 1991, they briefly had Commodores, until they switched to PCs. I have pretty distinct memories of having seen people do this prank out in front of a Radio Shack around here on a C64. If my memory is correct about this, then it would definitely not have been a very long time that they had them, because they were building PCs in 1992.
Security

Scammer Plants a Fake ATM At Defcon 17 394

Posted by kdawson from the not-the-brightest-LED-in-the-flashlight dept.
Groo Wanderer writes "Normally, a well-crafted fake ATM would skim a lot of card information before it was noticed, if it was ever noticed at all. Because it is safer for the criminals and harder to prosecute, financial crimes like this are spreading fast. If you are smart, you don't try to pull one off in the middle of a computer security convention where the attendees are very good at spotting such scams. That said, some not-so-bright criminal tried to plant a fake ATM at Defcon. He now has one less fake ATM and a whole lot of investigators on his tail."

Comment Re:Is AVP/AVPR canon? (Score 1) 336

by Mechanik (#28906061) Attached to: Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel

If they make AvP non-canon, then maybe they can do the same with Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection.

Agreed. I really wish they would film William Gibson's script for Alien III instead. If you get a chance, read it, it's awesome. It reads more like a novel than a script.

In summary... it was written at the time where Sigourney Weaver didn't want to do a sequel, and picks up where Aliens left off, except that the Sulaco drifts into Communist territory and is intercepted. Problem is, there are still aliens on the ship. The script basically centres around Hicks, as Ripley spends most of it in a coma. Lots of combat action... a true sequel to Aliens, rather than the butchering of the franchise we have been subjected to instead.
Movies

Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel 336

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the reboot-a-few-more-classics dept.
brumgrunt writes "After three decades of speculation, original Alien director Ridley Scott has signed on to the new Fox sequel. 'Nothing is known about the set-up of the new movie, except that chronologically it precedes the plight of the Nostromo. Since it's obviously going to involve the human race [...] Writer Jon Spaihts successfully pitched to Fox and Scott Free Productions, and is working on the script.'"
Supercomputing

US Supercomputer Lead Sparks Russian Govt's Competitive Drive 74

Posted by timothy from the ever-since-that-damn-satellite dept.
CWmike writes "Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered a crisis of confidence in the US that helped drive the creation of a space program. Now, Russia is comparing the US's achievements in supercomputing with theirs, and they don't like what they see. In a speech on Tuesday, Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, criticized his country's IT industry almost to the point of sarcasm for failing to develop supercomputing technology, and urged a dramatic change in Russia's use of high-performance computing. Medvedev, at the opening address of a Security Council Meeting on Supercomputers in Moscow, told attendees that 476 out of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list were manufactured in the United States. 'Therefore, in general, our situation is very difficult,' he said."
Technology

Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter" 406

Posted by timothy from the baseball-bats-will-never-be-the-same dept.
Professor_Quail writes with this interesting excerpt: "Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion."
Games

Which Game Series Would You Reboot? 1120

Posted by Soulskill from the star-control-please dept.
Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?
Biotech

DHS Pathogen Lab To Be Built In "Tornado Alley" 275

Posted by kdawson from the don't-think-we're-in-kansas-anymore dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that Department of Homeland Security is relying on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate the $700 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas. A GAO report says that it is not 'scientifically defensible' to conclude that lab can safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas. Such research has been conducted up to now on a remote island on the northern tip of Long Island, NY. 'Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences,' the GAO warned in its draft report. Critics of moving the operation to the mainland argue that a release could lead to widespread contamination that could kill livestock, devastate a farm economy, and endanger humans. Along with the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, NBAF researchers plan to study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, and other viruses in the Biosafety Level (BSL) 3 and BSL-4 livestock laboratory capable of developing countermeasures for foreign animal diseases. According to the article, DHS lobbied a Congressional committee to try and convince them that the GAO report was flawed, and to head off any hearings on the controversy. Despite this, the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the risk analysis."
The Almighty Buck

Valve's Newell On Community-Funded Games 176

Posted by Soulskill from the video-game-tycoon dept.
Modern games are extremely expensive to make. High-profile, AAA titles have budgets in the tens of millions, and even the smaller, independent titles can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. Couple this with development times that frequently reach three or four years and you have publishers who are very shy about investing in new projects, particularly for unproven IPs. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell recently spoke about a new way of funding such games: "There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative. What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, 'Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'" Such a system would certainly relieve some of the pressure to stick with tried-and-true concepts (and possibly get management to grant a little more leeway with deadlines and resources), and it would make the video game industry more of a meritocracy than it already is.
Cellphones

How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone 509

Posted by kdawson from the race-to-the-bottom dept.
snydeq writes to recommend Peter Wayner's inside look at the frustration iPhone developers face from Apple when attempting to distribute their apps through the iPhone App Store. Wayner's long piece is an extended analogy comparing Apple to the worst of Soviet-era bureaucracy. "Determined simply to dump an HTML version of his book into UIWebView and offer two versions through the App Store, Wayner endures four months of inexplicable silences, mixed messages, and almost whimsical rejections from Apple — the kind of frustration and uncertainty Wayner believes is fast transforming Apple's regulated marketplace into a hotbed of bottom-feeding mediocrity. 'Developers are afraid to risk serious development time on the platform as long as anonymous gatekeepers are able to delay projects by weeks and months with some seemingly random flick of a finger,' Wayner writes of his experience. 'It's one thing to delay a homebrew project like mine, but it's another thing to shut down a team of developers burning real cash. Apple should be worried when real programmers shrug off the rejections by saying, "It's just a hobby."'"
Lord of the Rings

LoTR Lawsuit Threatens Hobbit Production 427

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-we-wantsss-it dept.
eyrieowl writes "J.R.R.'s heirs are suing for royalties on the LoTR films. Apparently they haven't gotten any money due to some creative accounting. Peter Jackson ought to understand...he had to sue the studio for much the same reason. As for The Hobbit? FTFA: 'Tolkien's family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, seek more than $220 million in compensation...[and]...the option to terminate further rights to the author's work.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

Close