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Businesses

After Domain Squatting, Twitter Squatting 201

carusoj writes "Squatting on domain names is nothing new, but Twitter has created a new opportunity for squatters, in the form of Twitter IDs. Writes Richard Stiennon: 'Is there evidence of Twitter squatting (squitting?) Let's check. Yup, every single-letter TwitID is taken ... How about common words? Garage, wow, war, warcraft, Crisco, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken. My guess is that Twitter squatters have grabbed all of these in the hopes that they will be worth selling in the not too distant future. Of course the legitimate holders of brands can sue for them and Twitter can just turn them over if asked. But, because the investment and risk for the squatter is zero, you are going to see the rapid evaporation of available Twitter IDs.'"
Announcements

Submission + - Official : Far Cry 2 Is Coming To PS3 And Xbox 360 (xuecast.com)

XueCast writes: "http://www.xuecast.com/?p=438, Today in an official press release, Ubisoft has just announced that Far Cry 2, the much anticipated First Person Shooter game title will be coming to Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 video game consoles in the year 2008 or 2009. Far Cry 2 is currently under development by Ubisoft Montreal Studio and it will use neither CryEngine ( The game engine previously used on the first Far Cry game title ) nor CryEngine 2, but instead it will use a new game engine called Dunia ( Means " The World " in Indonesian and Malayan languages ). The Dunia engine supports DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and Multi Core Processors."
Programming

Submission + - Are CS students poor programmers? 2

DavidHumus writes: "Recently, at a computer conference, I heard two separate people say the same thing during the same day: computer science students are usually very poor programmers. Both these people were college professors in areas that do a lot of computing — mathematics and biology (population genetics) — and have dealt with a lot of students who have had to write programs for their courses.

The specific complaint of both professors was that CS students seem to have very superfical knowledge, that they don't understand things like the limitations of floating point arithmetic and verifying their output. One professor recounted the story of a student who wanted a good grade on a program because it ran to completion — never mind that the answers it gave were off by many orders of magnitude.

Do slashdotters agree or disagree with this? If it is true, why? Shouldn't computer science students be good programmers?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft launches the i'm Initiative

Khuffie writes: "Remember those stupid chain letters years ago, that claimed that Bill Gates will pay you for every person you forward the email to? Well, they've turned into reality...kind of. Microsoft has launched the i'm Initiative through Windows Live Messenger. Basically, you add an emoticon to your display name based on the charity you wish to support, and a portion of the advertising revenue generated from your usage of Messenger (remember, it has ads) will be donated to them. A neat idea, and they currently have nine charities to choose from, but unfortunately it is only available if you are in the United States."
User Journal

Captain Copyright Expires 114

The Canadian superhero Captain Copyright has finally expired, not due to pirates or to the passage of 50 years after the death of the author, but because "the current climate around copyright issues will not allow a project like this one to be successful." The cartoon was intended to provide an education in copyright law for children, but it became a focus for criticism when even the Canadian Library Association condemned it for lacking balance because it ignored issues like Fair Dealing (Canada's version of Fair Use). Personally, I was hoping we'd see them get sued by DC & Marvel, who claim to own the trademark on the word "superhero", and vanish in a puff of logic.
Security

"Very Severe Hole" In Vista UAC Design 813

Cuts and bruises writes "Hacker Joanna Rutkowska has flagged a "very severe hole" in the design of Windows Vista's User Account Controls (UAC) feature. The issue is that Vista automatically assumes that all setup programs (application installers) should be run with administrator privileges — and gives the user no option to let them run without elevated privileges. This means that a freeware Tetris installer would be allowed to load kernel drivers. Microsoft's Mark Russinovich acknowledges the risk factor but says it was a 'design choice' to balance security with ease of use."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Bizarre IT setups.

MicklePickle writes: I was talking to a co-worker the other day about the history of our company, (which shall remain nameless), and he started reminiscing about some of the IT hacks that our company did. Like running 10BaseT down a storm water drain to connect two buildings, using a dripping tap to keep the sewerage U-bend full of water in a computer room, (huh?). And some not so strange ones like running SCSI out to 100m, and running a major financial system on a long forgotten computer in a cupboard.
I know that there must be a plethora of IT hacks around. What are some you've seen?
Space

Submission + - Hawking Radiation does not exist.

morlock_man writes: "Based on the knowledge derived from the previous three articles, the assumptions concerning the formation of Hawking Radiation are very flawed. Attempts at the production of mini-black holes through high energy interactions in the Large Hardon Collider will no produce decaying black holes. They will produce stable black holes that will result in the early demise of mankind.

The last piece of the Large Hardon Collider was delivered last month. It is vital that this equipment is never used in this fashion. I know of no other way to get the word out fast enough."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Final Fantasy Tactics port coming to PSP

Anonymous Coward writes: "PSPFanboy has an article mentioning the upcoming port of Final Fantasy Tactics from the PS1 to the PSP. From the article:

"It appears that the PSP will be getting Final Fantasy Tactics: Shishi Sensou, an updated version of the original PlayStation classic. New anime FMVs and job classes are some of the anticipated upgrades for the PSP remake"
In some images I've seen from some quick google searches, it looks like Onion Knight may be one of the possible new jobs."
Security

Submission + - IE Users are Better at Updating Than Firefox Users

Jimmy T writes: New numbers from Secunia's Software Inspector tells an interesting story. The numbers, based on more than 400,000 application inspections, shows a somewhat different picture than what is commonly believed; More than 35% of all Firefox installations are missing critical security updates, while the same goes for only 4% of Internet Explorer users.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - commercial game written in pygame released

Horst JENS writes: "A game written in the python extension pygame was released this Saturday: Galcon is a hectic coffee-break game where you conquer planets by launching armadas of little spaceships against your enemy. The demo of the game is free to download, but to play the full version a key (US$ 19,95) has to be purchased. Mac and Windows versions are linked from the homepage, a linux version is not linked yet but can be found at http://www.imitationpickles.org/tmp/galcon.tgz"

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