Submission + - Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers (smh.com.au) 1
Hecatonchires writes: A blow to discworld fans everywhere. Terry Pratchett has announced he has a rare form of early onset alzheimers.
Submission + - what is the perfect coder's chair?
DragonTHC writes: "I am faced with sitting for long periods of time to do the majority of my work as a consultant. It seems that truly ergonomic chairs cost more than $700 these days. What kind of office chair should I get that will save my back and keep me from getting the DVTs in my legs? What chairs are out there that I can afford on my small budget up to $300? What do other coders spend their lives sitting in?"
Submission + - WoW issue causing large latency increase (worldofwarcraft.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A WoW player has discovered a issue with Blizzard's net code implementation that is resulting in a large increase in latency for the games 9 million+ players.
The effect of the bug has been to more than double the in game ping of any player who isn't geographically close to their server
Quoted from the thread:
"You do have to wonder. I basically researched and implemented this over the course of 4-5 hours. It is a simple option that can be set in any socket capable application. Blizzard could and should make this a switch in the wow client.
The answer is that probably the majority of their customers live in the USA, and that basically it wasn't worth their time to investigate. That said their network code guys should have been more proactive about this."
So far Blizzard has yet to acknowledge the issue which appears to have existed since the games inception.
The effect of the bug has been to more than double the in game ping of any player who isn't geographically close to their server
Quoted from the thread:
"You do have to wonder. I basically researched and implemented this over the course of 4-5 hours. It is a simple option that can be set in any socket capable application. Blizzard could and should make this a switch in the wow client.
The answer is that probably the majority of their customers live in the USA, and that basically it wasn't worth their time to investigate. That said their network code guys should have been more proactive about this."
So far Blizzard has yet to acknowledge the issue which appears to have existed since the games inception.
Submission + - Turbine uses Magnus effect (japantimes.co.jp)
tommyk writes: extracted from the article:
'Mecaro Co. is the maker of the new wind power generator, which stands about 18 meters tall and is called the Magnus turbine. What makes the windmill — the first of its kind developed in Japan — unusual is that it does not feature propeller blades. Instead, it has five spinning cylinders with spiral fins.'
looks playskool. Possibly it's because we don't have much wind generation where I live, but I've never seen or heard of one like this before I read the article.
'Mecaro Co. is the maker of the new wind power generator, which stands about 18 meters tall and is called the Magnus turbine. What makes the windmill — the first of its kind developed in Japan — unusual is that it does not feature propeller blades. Instead, it has five spinning cylinders with spiral fins.'
looks playskool. Possibly it's because we don't have much wind generation where I live, but I've never seen or heard of one like this before I read the article.
Submission + - VoIP for Crossplatform gamers (bonzoli.com)
Bonzoli writes: "Having issues hooking up with your voice communications when your on linux and your squad is on windows? Getting tired of making Wine and Ventrilo work on Linux every time you upgrade? Getting ticked your 5 year old version of Teamspeak that doesn't give up the /dev/dsp audio device wont let you hear the game? Well Mumble is the opensource solution to cross platform gaming. This VoIP Cross platform application supports encrypted connections, ingame directional audio from channel members, graphical overlay to see who is speaking, multiple channels, groups, sysadmin, pulseaudio support, text-to-speech, dbus, and a whole lot more to improve the gaming experience. This isn't just a catch up product, mumble is paving a new road for opensource gaming. http://mumble.sourceforge.net/"
Submission + - Casual gaming with serious undertones (chainfactor.com)
SixSided writes: Addictive online puzzle game Chain Factor is going into it's endgame, with just under six hours left until it either destroys the stock market, or well, doesn't. The game itself appears to be your average web based puzzle game, albeit a very enjoyable and addicting one. But in playing and discovering 'error messages' that pop up at random on a game ending, players have uncovered an underlying sinister story behind the game. As the story played out, it revealed that the game data fed to the players is coming from stock market feeds and by playing the game the players are essentially acting as a human compiler. They are unwittingly working out large biding chains that with enough build up, are supposed to have a harmonic resonance like effect, sending the markets into chaos and destroying them. Sure, this isn't entirely plausible in all reality, but it's a nice idea.
Of course none of that is actually real, and the game is in fact a tie in to a Numb3rs episode that aired a month ago on the 9th of November. The episode in question involved Alternate Reality Games and this is just an ARG type tie in to it. As promotional tie ins go however, it has done very well in being a game of it's own and not just a promotional tool to shove advertising in your face. Bar a small reference in the 'Terms of Use' on the main site, there have been no real pointers to CBS, even with the Chain Factor ads, which ranged from billboards to TV spots, each with hidden puzzles to unlock more features of the online game. One of the people believed to be behind the game is Ian Bogost from Persuasive Games, who make 'electronic games for persuasion, instruction, and activism', as this game very much fits the types of games with underlying messages that they have created in the past.
The game is nearing the end with the accumulative points between 2 different modes, 'survival' and 'power', working as either the execute or abort of the final sequence, depending on which has a larger total when the countdown ends. If 'Survival' is greater it is stopped, if 'Power' is greater it goes ahead and the bad guy wins. As of writing this survival is trailing by just under 250 million points, so it'll take a serious last minute push on Survival Mode to save the day. All in all it is a rather interesting spin on the simple concept of the power of using the human brain to solve complex problems and the use of something such as an addictive online game to do so. Oh, and a great puzzle game to boot.
So go get playing Survival Mode and help save the world!
Of course none of that is actually real, and the game is in fact a tie in to a Numb3rs episode that aired a month ago on the 9th of November. The episode in question involved Alternate Reality Games and this is just an ARG type tie in to it. As promotional tie ins go however, it has done very well in being a game of it's own and not just a promotional tool to shove advertising in your face. Bar a small reference in the 'Terms of Use' on the main site, there have been no real pointers to CBS, even with the Chain Factor ads, which ranged from billboards to TV spots, each with hidden puzzles to unlock more features of the online game. One of the people believed to be behind the game is Ian Bogost from Persuasive Games, who make 'electronic games for persuasion, instruction, and activism', as this game very much fits the types of games with underlying messages that they have created in the past.
The game is nearing the end with the accumulative points between 2 different modes, 'survival' and 'power', working as either the execute or abort of the final sequence, depending on which has a larger total when the countdown ends. If 'Survival' is greater it is stopped, if 'Power' is greater it goes ahead and the bad guy wins. As of writing this survival is trailing by just under 250 million points, so it'll take a serious last minute push on Survival Mode to save the day. All in all it is a rather interesting spin on the simple concept of the power of using the human brain to solve complex problems and the use of something such as an addictive online game to do so. Oh, and a great puzzle game to boot.
So go get playing Survival Mode and help save the world!
Submission + - Linux Users Can't Sell On eBay (ubuntuforums.org) 2
bobintetley writes: Many Linux/Firefox users are reporting problems uploading images to eBay. Having tested this myself, it is indeed completely broken. Why eBay would break standard HTTP uploads by using IE specific javascript to "check the file exists" boggles the mind. This problem has been reported to eBay since late October, but so far with no resolution. eBay have since stated that only IE is supported. I guess when you have no real competition you can pull stunts like this.
Submission + - Animation illustrates Mobius Transformations
Tablizer writes: Science News describes a youtube sensation whereby Mobius transformations can be described simply as a linear projection through a sphere to a plane. The coolest transformation is the inversion, in which a rectangular image can be turned inside out. I'd like to see this transformation on actual images (but not goatse, please).
Submission + - Amazon Patents Including a String at End of a URL
theodp writes: "On Tuesday, Amazon search subsidiary A9.com was awarded U.S. patent no. 7,287,042 for 'including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.' In the Summary of the Invention, it's explained that 'a user wishing to search for 'San Francisco Hotels' may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system.' Here's the flowchart that helped cinch the deal."
Submission + - MMO educational opportunites
pspahn writes: "I felt this was worth it's own thread, even though it's an idea I generated in a nearby thread.
This is also a post meant more for CCP bigwigs to read, hopefully they do.
I have spent a few years on Eve, on and off (which explains my terrible SP/month ratio), and in that time I have realized (along with everyone else) that Eve has a few very noteworthy life lessons to teach. How can an 'experience' like Eve NOT teach kids that trust is one of the most important aspects of life. Working in a facility that tries to teach these wayward kids, I have learned that trust is the main fundamental issue when it comes down to it. Kids don't trust their parents, who they see as purely authoritative, which they associate with teacher, and cops, and anyone else higher up on the food chain for that matter.
If they were to become involved with a legitimate corp in Eve, with legitimate goals, don't you think that would help prepare them for the real world in more than a few ways?
The fact is, Eve is a harsh reality in most aspects. There are people left and right trying to rip you off. There are people left and right who are genuinely good people. Then there are those (like myself), who are both. I honestly think that exposing some of these kids would be a true benefit to their life lesson plan.
Not to mention, there would be a great excuse to keep them afterschool, teaching them about computers (which very few of them have).
So, I suppose the question is, would CCP be interested in donating half a dozen accounts to some kids? It's as simple as that. I can worry about how to get them a decent computer and internet access. I'm sure there are many who disagree with this sort of 'method' of expanding the knowledge of our youth, but I can tell you, I work with them every day, and I think it could do a lot of good.
I'm going to submit this to slashdot as well, because this really is a question/topic worth investigating."
Submission + - Single Mother Victorious against RIAA
Dogggis writes: Tanya Andersen is a disabled single mother living in Oregon with her now 10-year-old daughter. In February 2005, she was sued by the record labels, which accused her of using KaZaA to distribute gangster rap under the handle "gotenkito." Calling the RIAA's case unjustified "as a reasonable exploration of the boundaries of copyright law," a federal magistrate judge late last week awarded former RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen attorneys' fees for her nearly two-and-a-half-year fight against a copyright infringement lawsuit.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-victorious-riaa-defendant-gets-attorneys-fees-turns-to-class-action-plans.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-victorious-riaa-defendant-gets-attorneys-fees-turns-to-class-action-plans.html
Submission + - Florida Judge OK's Claims Against Record Companies (blogspot.com)
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: A federal judge in Tampa, Florida, has ruled that an RIAA defendant's counterclaim against the record companies for conspiracy to use unlicensed investigators, access private computer records without permission, and commit extortion, may move forward. The Court also sustained claims for violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as well as a claim under Florida law for deceptive and unfair trade practices. The decision (pdf) by Judge Richard A. Lazzara in UMG v. DelCid rejected, in its entirety, the RIAA's assertion of "Noerr Pennington" immunity, since that defense does not apply to "sham litigations", and Ms. Del Cid alleges that the RIAA's cases are "sham".
New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 144
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, 'when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....' and concluded that 'Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case.' This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant recently converted her RICO case into a class action"
Submission + - How-To: Switch Your Grandma to Linux (madpenguin.org)
LNX writes: "Matt Hartley of MadPenguin.org writes to let us know that a new article on How-To: Switch Your Grandma to Linux is up on his site. It's a humorous article that shows you how to take beginners, such as your grandma, and convert them into Linux users. He continues, "I've said it before, with the proper support in place, anyone can use certain Linux distributions successfully. And apparently, this has been shown to be true yet again. But even considering this success story, there remains a shortage of understanding on which dial-up modems will work and why, if that new all-in-one printer grandma just purchased will work with her chosen distribution and so on.
Today, I will explore the viability of grandma, obviously not using some kind of broadband connection, making the switch. Hassle and benefit will be looked into here."
Submission + - Madeleine L'Engle, 1918 - 2007
mosel-saar-ruwer writes: Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin passed away, on Sept. 6, aged 88, at Rose Haven nursing home, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Even before we discovered Tolkien, CS Lewis, or Robert Heinlein, many /.-ers' first exposure to Science Fiction and Fantasy was surely L'Engle's 1962 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. The Washington Post has an obituary, and the New York Post's John Podhoretz relates his childhood memories of life at 924 West End Avenue with Mr. & Mrs. Franklin.
