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Games

Heavy Rain Previews Show Promise 84

Posted by Soulskill from the blue-skies dept.
As the February release date for Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain nears, several publications have gotten a chance for some hands-on time with the game and seem to be intrigued by what they saw. Quoting the Opposable Thumbs blog: "The game grabs you during the quiet moments where nothing 'happens.' When you look at a picture your child drew. When you're questioning someone about a crime. When you're trying to figure out how to react to a violent situation. The preview we were sent put me in different situations as I played a small handful of characters, and each one provided a few tiny moments that were surprising in terms of storytelling or subtlety." Eurogamer's previewer had a similar reaction: "To my great delight as well — Heavy Rain isn't a mature game because it has unhappy families and moody lighting, it's a mature game because it anticipates an adult response from the player and is prepared to receive it."

Comment Re:Analysis of WIkiLeaks' action (Score 2, Interesting) 429

by gnurfed (#22765838) Attached to: Wikileaks Releases Early Atomic Bomb Diagram

When does "strong transparency" turn into treason, obstructing justice, or invasion of privacy?

That would depend on (1) the primary source of the information and (2) who publishes it. I don't think most 'patriotic' Chinese citizens would consider publishing the U.S. defence plans for Taiwan 'treason'. When it comes to classified material related to national security, the primary source is in most circumstances committing an illegal act. If it's treason... Well that probably depends on what is uncovered - if it shows that a government is breaking national laws it can be argued that NOT trying to make it known would amount to 'treason'.

Making an, relatively speaking, ancient design for an atomic bomb public is hardly something worth getting upset about, especially since any modern (and reasonably skilled) nuclear physicist could make a far better job.
Mozilla

Submission + - 3D inside browser without plugin

Submitted by
Hans Schmucker
Hans Schmucker writes: "The WHATWG is, as you probably know, right now forming the basis for the next generation of HTML. And I have to say, I love what they are doing and I especially love the browser makers (all except Microsoft, because from what I've seen so far I'd say that IE7 is simply the IE6 rendering engine with minor improvement and a new user interface, not a major update) for implementing the stuff that quickly.
Among other things, the WHATWG is standardizing Apple's Canvas element which is something web developers have wanted for years: A way to draw graphics inside the browser. Problem is that so far only the 2D part has been documented, even though both Mozilla and Opera are working on 3D support.
Well, to fill the gap I've put up a working software renderer here that uses the 2D commands to draw a simple (but real, not Doom-style 2.5D) 3D model from an OBJ file. It's not perfect and I'm taking a lot of shortcuts to speed up rendering, but it works pretty well. The code is available under GPL so you can take whatever you want and start your own program. The target for mine is to eventually become a racing game, and from what I've seen so far it seems possible to at least get VirtuaRacer style graphics.
Here's the link again: Canvas 3D Demo
Feel free to give feedback"
Announcements

Submission + - Nerd Apocalypse: Hardcore Gaming On the Decline

Submitted by
njkid1
njkid1 writes: "The numbers are out, and the verdict is in. The hardcore gamer audience is turning into a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. What will nerds do when the gaming industry starts to ignore them? The response to Next-Gen piece "THE GAMES PEOPLE BUY" has been pouring in. Ars-Technica Opposable Thumbs commented that demand for casual-style games is not necessarily reducing the number of hardcore gamers — it is making the percentage of Cheeto-eating, basement-dwelling gamers drop. http://www.gamedailyxl.com/2007/02/14/nerd-apocaly pse-hardcore-gaming-on-the-decline?&ncid=AOLGAM000 500000000014"
Education

Submission + - Kansas abandons "intelligent design" in s

Submitted by joe90
joe90 writes: Kansas has repealed public school science guidelines questioning the theory of evolution that brought the state international ridicule, but educators aren't sure how long it will be before the decision is overturned. The State Board of Education approved new, evolution-friendly science standards with a 6-4 vote Tuesday, replacing ones that questioned the theory and had the support of "intelligent design" advocates.
Movies

Submission + - Mexico = #1 in movie piracy, not China or Russia

Submitted by
soulxtc
soulxtc writes: "In a new report just released by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPI), the estimated trade losses due to piracy reveal some interesting results that seem to be startlingly absent from all the current discussions about the levels piracy and copyright infringement in the world. China and Russia are the two countries that are frequently cited as the world's "piracy powerhouse" over the rampant pirating of movies and music that occur in their countries, with Hollywood recently even going so far as to place Canada at number 3 on its "Most Wanted List" with its alleged camcording "leniency." But, is this really the case? The report finds that Mexico is responsible for almost TWICE the amount of lost revenue from movie piracy that China is ($484 million USD versus $244 million USD), and yet barely a word of this is mentioned in the media or even uttered from the lips of the WTO or any of the intellectual property enforcement organizations."
The Internet

US Group Wants Canada Blacklisted Over Piracy 585

Posted by samzenpus from the are-you-on-the-list dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on an earlier story, the IIAA wants to add Canada to a blacklist of the worst intellectual property offenders. A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize. 'Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections', the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government."
Databases

Submission + - Master Boot Record Guided Tour

Submitted by IdaAshley
IdaAshley writes: This article explores the Linux boot process from the initial bootstrap to the start of the first user-space application. Along the way, learn about other boot-related topics such as the boot loaders, kernel decompression, and the initial RAM disk. Also take a look at a scheduled chat about the Linux desktop and how it is evolving, including improvements in application interoperability, and desktop graphics.
The Internet

Submission + - Citizendium failing to gain traction?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Despite the two recent Slashdot articles about Larry Sanger's Citizendium, it appears that the site is having difficulty converting good publicity into new content. Although the project saw impressive spikes in the number of new user registrations on both occasions, neither of them resulted in a general increase in the number of edits made to the site; even the number of article edits for the last 24 hours are lower than pre-Slashdot levels. What does this mean for the budding Wikipedia competitor?
User Journal

Journal Journal: 'Gateway' gene discovered for brain cancer

Journal by stemceller
Researchers have discovered that the same genetic regulator that triggers growth of stem cells during brain development also plays a central role in the development of the lethal brain cancer malignant glioma. In experiments on mice with such gliomas, they showed that knocking out the function of a particular regulatory protein, Olig2, almost completely eliminated tumor formation.
Quickies

Submission + - MS warns users not to trust its software -- DST

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "Yahoo! News reports that Microsoft is warning users not to trust its calendar and appointment software. For three weeks this March and April, Microsoft warns that users of its calendar programs "should view any appointments ... as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees." It's a potential problem in any software that was programmed before a 2005 law decreed that daylight-saving time (DST) would start three weeks earlier and end one week later, beginning this year. Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings. Software created earlier is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not the second Sunday in March (that's March 11 this year [2007]). The result is a glitch reminiscent of the Y2K bug, when cataclysmic crashes were feared if computers interpreted the year 2000 as 1900 and couldn't reconcile time appearing to move backward. This bug is much less threatening, but it could cause head-scratching episodes when some computers are an hour off. The problem won't show up only in computers, of course. It will affect plenty of non-networked devices that store the time and automatically adjust for daylight saving, like some digital watches and clocks. But in those instances the result will be a nuisance (adjust the time manually or wait three weeks) rather than something that might throw a wrench in the works. Digg."
Spam

Submission + - Email that's Spam Harvester-Proof... Seriously

Submitted by
Slimtreeshadow
Slimtreeshadow writes: "Here's a method to publish emails embedded in links. The system opens a web page w/ the encoded URL and then sends a mailto to your client of choice. Has anyone seen something like this? He claims the system is totally harvester proof. Quote:

While in the hospital a short time ago (urgent abdominal surgery), I had a lot of time to meditate and imagine without the pressures of day-to-day business intruding. And I figured out how to do it. The system is harvester-proof. No doubt. The email address can not even be harvested by manually clicking on the link. The system never discloses the real destination email address to any party, robot or human...

Click this link to try it: http://flow-to.com/email/w.u1171228517w.mth

The link can be on web pages, in emails, used in news groups, even published off-line in newspapers or on highway billboards, just like any other URL.

When the link is clicked, two things happen:

(i) your email program opens a new email form or window with the "To" and possibly other fields pre-filled, and

(ii) your browser opens a web page. Depending on your browser, the web page will be blank or it will contain normal web page content.
The full post is here."

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