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Comment What's in the minds of the mods around here? (Score 1) 691

by jamesswift (#31492406) Attached to: China To Connect Its High-Speed Rail To Europe

I don't mean to antagonise the parent, but I have to remark how it's fascinating to watch the parent post go from +5 Insightful to +5 Interesting and all the while I and other posters have provided citations showing that the parent post is, in fact, neither Insightful nor Interesting.

I'd love to see time series graphs of mod points for these posts.

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 4, Funny) 691

by jamesswift (#31491582) Attached to: China To Connect Its High-Speed Rail To Europe

M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
Input Devices

Sony's PS3 Motion Controller Gets Demoed and Named 116

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pull-the-strings dept.
itwbennett writes "In a 45-minute press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced its motion controller, officially named the Playstation Move. The Move consists of the Eye Toy (a camera pointed at the player) and a wand-like controller with a lighted ball at the end and a range of buttons on the shaft, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Alternatively games can use two of the wands, or one wand and one "sub-controller" that has an analog stick (the camera is always required),' says Smith. 'If this is sounding very much like the Wii's Remote and Nunchuk well, you aren't far off (though at least there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated).' Here are Smith's thoughts on the demo: 'All in all, the demos seemed OK, but I, at least, wasn't really blown away by any of them. That said, it's always hard to tell how well these systems work without actually trying them for yourself. You need to feel the connection (or lack thereof) between what your hands are doing and what's going on on-screen in order to be sure. For example, in the boxing demo the player did a quick spin move that led to a roundhouse punch. It's hard to say if his motion triggered a pre-set action (a 'combo') or if the system was able to track the controller that accurately, and was able to 'connect the dots' from when his body briefly occluded the wand to when it reappeared.'"

Submission + - Low support for Australian Internet Filtering (whirlpool.net.au)

Submitted by ThinkOfaNumber
ThinkOfaNumber writes: Results from Whirlpool's 2009 Australian Broadband Survey are in with (not-so?) surprising results about the Australian Federal Government's mandatory internet filtering. Only 7.4% of over 23,000 validated unique surveys supported the idea. Of course, Whirlpool is a large forum with many IT-savvy readers, and the survey doesn't represent a broad selection of Australians, but they state this bias and the results are interesting nonetheless.

Submission + - Ubisoft's new DRM system cracked within a day (eurogamer.net)

Submitted by mobby_6kl
mobby_6kl writes: The previous article on this topic got even more attention from slashdot posters than the original confirmation of Ubisoft's new draconian DRM system, but one of the first games to implement this has been released recently, and, perhaps to the surprise of few, was cracked on the very same day, according to Eurogamer and many other sources. Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic was supposed to implement the system under which a constant connection to Ubi's servers was required in order to play the game, but contrary to the article linked in the previous submission, it appears to have been much more vulnerable than expected.

So far Ubisoft denies that the game has been really cracked, and while it is indeed too early to tell which part of the protection was circumvented, and whether it was a weakness in the specific implementation, it is hard to argue with the ability to play the game after the rather standard process of installing the game and then overwriting the executable with the one provided. It should also be noted that the patch which was rushed out to address some of the game's technical issues fared no better than the original release.

Submission + - California to Create Public Animal Abuser Registry (time.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: California legislators are moving forward with plans to create a public, online, animal abuser registry identical in function to the public sex offender registry. Is this the slippery slope to further government mandated lists and registries?

Submission + - Alien prequel to be in 3D, and may be a trilogy (shadowlocked.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An interview with Star Wars and Alien production designer Roger Christian has revealed that the rumours about Ridley Scott's 'Alien' prequel being in 3D are true. Christian says: "Ridley's doing the next Alien in 3D." Christian also commented about his hopes for a new Alien trilogy and discusses how Alien/Scott are the only combination that would bring him back from directing movies to his former role as an art director.
Apple

Submission + - Apple removes Wi-Fi finders from App Store (cnet.com)

Submitted by jasonbrown
jasonbrown writes: Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi.
Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder.
Microsoft

Submission + - Ballmer bets Microsoft's future on the cloud (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Seventy percent of the 40,000 people who work on software at Microsoft are in some way working in the cloud, CEO Steve Ballmer said in a talk to comp sci students at the University of Washington. "A year from now, that will be 90 percent," he said. Ballmer also said that Microsoft wants to help foster the development of different cloud-computing services, both private and public. All Microsoft products including Windows, Office, Xbox, Azure, Bing and Windows Phone are driven by the idea of being connected to the cloud."

Submission + - Hacker Space Festival splits across locations (hackerspace.net) 1

Submitted by lekernel
lekernel writes: After the success of the second Hacker Space Festival, the international community of hackers are invited to participate in the multiple events of the third edition. Hackito Ergo Sum (Paris, April 8-10) will be your usual security conference. Breizh Entropy Congress (Rennes, April 15-17, submission deadline March 16) is an eclectic event themed around free culture and technologies. Les Contorsions Technologiques (Paris, May 1st, submission deadline March 20) focuses on DIY hardware. Tetalab Hacker Space Festival (Toulouse, May 28-30) will consist in conferences and workshops revolving around hackerspaces activities. Eventually, Estive Numérique (Southern Alps countryside, July 20-26) will be about autonomy and self-sufficiency in the digital age. With such events blossoming, France looks like the place to be during the next months!
Advertising

Submission + - Advertising on the Internet, or How Not To.

Submitted by Eric Freyhart
Eric Freyhart writes: I have been working to bring a new commercial website online. The URL is http://www.pricenation.com/ . I have owned this URL for over 14 years, and after a layoff last year decided to get into business for myself and finally bring it online. As you may know, advertising what you sell is the key to a successful business. So we started a Google ad campaign.

The last time I did a Google advertisement campaign for my employer we received massive amounts of traffic and great conversions (sales). Now that I started my own business enterprise I find that the market is saturated and conversions are few and far between. We have issued out over 2 million advertising banners, yet only 500 or so clickthroughs. Is this the standard now, or am I doing something wrong?

Is the end of the Internet advertising system coming to an end? Are fewer people clicking on advertising links? Is this why Google converted to a pay-per-click system instead of the original pay-per-impressions system?

Since Slashdot is the leader in the community for Internet developement and news, I would love to hear back from the members on this issue.
Google

Submission + - YouTube Makes Captioning Available to All

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Google's YouTube announced that it has moved its automatic speech-recognition and closed-captioning technology out of beta and have now made it available to the YouTube community at large. Most, if not all, YouTube videos now include a "CC" button that, if pressed, will automatically generate the closed-captioning technology. The technology processes the audio feed, using the speech-recognition technology used in the core voice search feature that has also built into the Android voice search feature, the GOOG-411 phone search, and other products.

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