Comment Re:A cotton transistor takes the prize (Score 1) 92
Hah! Well punned.
Comment My travel buddy (Score 1) 233
and I had thought to take a cruise ship down to Mexico around then, but changed our minds after we realized how many people would be down there. We'll probably just stay home and watch end of the world movies for a week instead.
Comment Re:Exciting! (Score 1) 199
I hate writing SyFy for the channel as well. And that's unfortunate re the movie. I can enjoy a certain type of bad movie, when they have fun with it and are at least interesting.
Comment Exciting! (Score 4, Funny) 199
I can't wait for the SyFy movie based on the 'true story' :)
Comment Re:Umm... (Score 1) 681
That was my first thought. Even if he doesn't own stock/part of a firm, he may well be getting paid to promote them in some other manner.
Comment here you go (Score 1) 70
Link to Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/
Submission + - Lenovo to offer $200 budget tablet (engadget.com)
khellendros1984 writes: Amazon's not the only big-name company planning on a budget-level tablet release; Lenovo recently announced their Ideapad A1 tablet as competition. It includes a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, along with other features more commonly seen on higher-priced tablets, such as dual cameras, bluetooth, GPS, wifi, and a MicroSD slot. Is this the start of the Android tablet price avalanche?
Submission + - So much for Civil Liberties online in the UK... (pirateparty.org.uk)
Ajehals writes: "It's "acceptable to shut Twitter and Facebook off for an hour or two"... But Government has "no intention of restricting Internet services"? Governments don't get technology.
At every turn, the coalition has been exposed as having no coherent policy on digital rights. Nothing illustrates this better than its zig-zag course on Internet filtering and website blocking."
At every turn, the coalition has been exposed as having no coherent policy on digital rights. Nothing illustrates this better than its zig-zag course on Internet filtering and website blocking."
Submission + - Poor Second-Hand Game Sales Aren't Consumers Fault 1
edcs writes: Insidestroll has a breakdown of why game publishers can't blame their customers for buying used games, and why games are absolutely not a better deal than movies: "Games are a medium that costs less then half as much as movies to make, and yet costs three times as much to consume." The article also speculates that over-inflated prices may have caused the game industry more problems than just a poor second-hand market, mainly by stifling creativity through breeding a timid consumer base that is unlikely to take a risk on innovative titles.
Comment Re:Why did it take Facebook for them to do this? (Score 1) 58
What's always vexed me is the whole "best seat" thing that ticketmaster does. Their definition of a best seat and mine tend to differ quite a lot.
Submission + - Deus Ex: Human Revolution, A Successful Sequel? (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Eleven years ago, now-defunct developer Ion Storm released Deus Ex and made video game history. Part of what won Deus Ex such acclaim back then was its open-ended approach to problem solving. Virtually every mission could be approached from stealth or with reckless abandon. The game's plot is a fusion of classic conspiracy theories and a referendum on what it means to be human. The problems of humanity in 2052 — plague, environmental destruction, rampant terrorism — were far enough away in time to be comfortable, but close enough to be unsettling. Therecently released sequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution isn't a perfect smash hit, nor was the original but the game play is fun and the graphics impressive with DX11 effects turned up. Frame rates with a solid mainstream graphics card should be decent, though level load times can be lengthy and even hinder playbility, if you're trying to crack a tough level and have to reload often. However, the game transcends its flaws. If you liked the original Deus Ex, or you think you'd like it based on its description, it probably makes sense to pick this one up."
Submission + - Oldest Irion culture in south Asia (urlaub-sr-lanka.info)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the archeological evidences found recently; Iron Age existed in Sri Lanka as early as 1700 B.C. There by making Sri Lanka as the first country, this used iron in the southern Asia.
Submission + - Google Gets Accepted by Nine Schools in One Day
theodp writes: How did Google manage to get nine Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to announce their decision to switch to Google Apps on the same day? Well, offering a free product doesn't hurt. Neither, apparently, does offering a three-day, all-expenses paid trip to New York City, where representatives of the nine schools pledged Google on the first day of the search giant's 3rd Annual Google-HBCU Faculty Summit. To help seal its college deals, Google also provides a White Paper that, among other things, points out that Outlook flunked out of Howard ('Washington, D.C.'s Howard University was using Microsoft Outlook for campus email, but was concerned by low usage"), and suggests that failing to adopt Google Apps could deprive students of a college education ('The money we've saved by switching to Google Apps has helped us direct funds to scholarships, letting more students who couldn't afford to stay enrolled continue their education').
Submission + - EU 'Unitary Patents' could mean software patents (guardian.co.uk)
chebucto writes: RMS has an article up at the Guardian about the proposed EU Unitary Patent system, which would make any patent issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) valid in all of the EU except for Spain and Italy. The unitary patent system would remove national jurisdiction over patents, leaving the European Court of Justice (the ECJ — the highest court in Europe) as the only body with appeal power over EPO decisions. There's a real chance that patent policy throughout much of Europe will be decided by an organization that's shown, in practice, that it supports software patents.
Submission + - Move to Rebuild the Berlin Wall
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Today on the the 50th anniversary of one of the biggest and grimmest construction projects in history — the building of the Berlin Wall — AFP reports that there is a move to put parts of the wall back up, “as accurately as possible, with barbed wire, watch towers, and spring guns, so the brutality of the system is evident,” says Berlin’s former Mayor Eberhard Diepgen. “It was wrong to take all those pieces of Berlin Wall, paint them and send them off into the world as souvenirs of a peaceful revolution." Meanwhile some historians are making a reappraisal that the toppling of the wall in 1989 had little to do with Reagan, and even less to do with bellicose confrontation arguing that the wall created the stability between the superpowers that was the precondition for the peaceful demise of communism several decades later. "It's not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war," said President Kennedy when construction began in 1961. The wall forced West Germans to face reality: "The U.S. wasn't going to war over the Berlin Wall; East Germany wasn't going away; and trying to isolate it would only strengthen the hand of communist hard-liners," writes Jacob Heilbrunn. "The shrewder policy was to encourage as much contact as possible with the West.""
