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Google

Startup Claims Google Copied Web-Annotation Product 167

Posted by timothy from the evil-or-coincidence dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Web annotation startup ReframeIt claim Google copied their web annotation product when releasing Google Sidewiki. At first glance, the products do look quite similar, and this eWeek article has some interesting evidence, including suspicious user registrations by Google employees and an attempt by Google to hire off ReframeIt's lead engineer."

Comment Re:Imagination. (Score 2, Informative) 240

by griego (#27843705) Attached to: A History of <em>Rogue</em>
In Final Fantasy XI, the weather (and day of the week, which are all named after elements) does affect spell resist rates, as well as crafting success rates. Thunder-based spells cast during lightning storms will more often land for full damage; crafting an item using a Fire Crystal on Watersday (and/or during rainy weather) will more likely result in critical failure, causing you to lose some or all of your ingredients.
Software

Phoronix Releases Linux Benchmarking Platform 34

Posted by timothy from the mom-can-I-have-a-cookie-mom-can-I-have-a-cookie dept.
KernelPie writes "The Linux hardware site Phoronix.com has announced the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.0, a Linux-based testing platform designed for benchmarking software and hardware. This suite ships with 57 tests and 23 test suites, which contain everything from open-source games to file encryption to encoding software. In addition, they have a global database where users can submit benchmark results and more — with over 1,000 submissions already. This testing software is licensed under the GPLv3 and is available for download."
Government

Data Retention Proven to Change Citizen Behavior 261

Posted by samzenpus from the I-always-feel-like-somebody's-watching-me dept.
G'Quann writes "A new survey shows that data retention laws indeed do influence the behavior of citizens (at least in Germany). 11% had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions and 52% would not use phone or e-mail for confidential contacts. This is the perfect argument against the standard 'I have nothing to hide' argumentation. Surveillance is not only bad because someone might discover some embarrassment. It changes people. 11% at least."
Data Storage

FreeBSD Begins Switch to Subversion 120

Posted by timothy from the subvert-the-dominant-paradigm dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Project has begun the switch of its source code management system from CVS to Subversion. At this point in time, FreeBSD's developers are making changes to the base system in the Subversion repository. We have a replication system in place that exports our work to the legacy CVS tree on a continuous basis. People who are using our extensive CVS based distribution network (including anoncvs, CVSup, cvsweb, ftp) will not be interrupted by our work-in-progress. We are committed to maintaining the existing CVS based distribution system for at least the support lifetime of all existing 'stable' branches. Security and errata patches will continue to be made available in their usual CVS locations."
Mozilla

Firefox Appears Ready to Crack 20% Share Next Month 295

Posted by timothy from the one-in-five dept.
CWmike writes "Mozilla's Firefox browser is on pace to hit the 20% market-share mark next month. Net Applications marketing VP Vince Vizzaccaro didn't pin all of Firefox's increase on a change last month to its update dialog; he did note the new approach. 'Mozilla has implemented a change in Firefox 3.0 [Release Candidate 1] where the installation now has a checkbox that defaults to making Firefox your default browser,' he explained. He refused to ding Mozilla for the practice. 'The option is clearly displayed and labeled, unlike Safari, which misleadingly labeled the Safari install as an "update" [but has] since correctly changed to an 'install.' However, this practice is a break from the traditional practice browsers employed of defaulting this option to off.'"
Classic Games (Games)

Unreleased Atari 2600 Game Found At Flea Market 253

Posted by kdawson from the once-in-a-lifetime dept.
VonGuard writes "I was at the flea market in Oakland yesterday when a pile of EPROMs caught my eye. When I got them home I found that they were prototypes for Colecovision games. A few were unpublished or saw limited runs, like Video Hustler (billiards). Others were fully released, like WarGames. But the crown jewel is what look to be a number of chips with various revisions of Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600. This game was never released and has never been seen. It was a port of the version for Colecovision, and this lot of chips also included the Coleco version. So now I have to find someone who can dump EPROMs gently onto a PC so we can play this never-before seen game, which is almost certainly awful."
Software

Submission + - Things that video games could do without

Submitted by
Mike99TA
Mike99TA writes: "The Penny-Arcade Forums have a current discussion going on about What Video Games Could Do Without. Most of the issues brought up are tactics that have been used by video game companies over and over for years, usually to pad a game with extra playtime, make it look like the game has extra (useless) features, force something to be challenging by making it more frustrating, or a cop-out to make a "convenient" scenario for the protagonist (indestructable boxes in every hallway to provide cover?). From the Thread:

"The bulk of spells in RPG's need to go away as well. Final Fantasy games suffer from this the most. There's a ton of spells to learn, but very few have practical application. The frequent and crucial spells are revive, heal, elemental damage, and that's it. Everything else is not necessary to the game, nor does is give you a 'different' way to overcome challenges in the game.""
Media

Submission + - RIAA Suing User for Copying CDs to Hard Drive 2

Submitted by
tigerhawkvok
tigerhawkvok writes: "Everyone has some gripe about the the RIAA. Well, here's one that we can all partake in, more than usual: The RIAA has officially started suing people for copying CDs to their hard drive. Yes. You read that right. They want you to fill up your PMPs with just content downloaded from their label websites, Microsoft's marketplace, iTunes, or what have you. No CDs allowed.
No, this is not just the famous side-comment of "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy' " as said by the Sony/BMG chick. This is an actual lawsuit.

This disgusting trend brought to your attention courtesy Engadget."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Recent Hacking on the Final Fantasy XI Community

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: As of late, hundreds of Final Fantasy XI accounts have been compromised by a trojan that was leaked into a Final Fantasy XI information page. As more and more accounts seize to exist by legit players, Square Enix continues to do nothing but brush the rightful owners off. With this happening, thousands of players refuse to even log onto their characters, and some just choose to stay up all night watching over them, due to the paranaoia of which account will be taken next. Everyone seems to agree that their Service and Support/GM team should be rendered useless at this point, for refusing to even listen to their customers about the on-going situation. What will it take to get them to notice? It looks like we'll be seeing a lot of WoW boxes under everyone's christmas tree this year. Good job, SE, you done good.
Security

Submission + - FFXI players targetted by malware

Submitted by
Thatdamnelf
Thatdamnelf writes: "Several prominent informational websites relating to Final Fantasy XI online have recently been suspected of having malware embedded into one or more of the advertisements by an unscrupulous advertiser. One site was confirmed to have a hidden iframe that would use javascript to load rsbo.exe which targets users of multiple different MMO games.

The worst part about this is Square-Enix's total lack of recovery measures.

The company's customer service can't verify ownership of an account based on anything but what is currently input as billing info. This is a major problem since both the password and billing information are changed by the thief. They should be able to see that the info was changed recently and since accounts aren't supposed to be transfered err on the side of someone who presents info the matches someone who's been paying for all these months/years..It seems this information is not readily available for SE's employees and it takes a credit card company fraud inquiry to get it dug up.

I used the ffxi.somepage website to look up crafting recipes (the in game NPC's give horribly useless recipes). If I weren't using the seamonkey/firefox noscript plugin, I may have lost my account to an RMT.

relevant links:
http://bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27256
http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27042
http://tinyurl.com/2n2ex4
http://tinyurl.com/2qzaba"

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