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Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? Screenshot-sm 735

Posted by samzenpus from the not-that-there-is-anything-wrong-with-that dept.
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
Media

Tired of Flash? HTML5 Viewer For YouTube 372

Posted by timothy from the that-taste-great-together dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, NeoSmart Technologies has made an HTML5 viewer for YouTube videos. It loads YouTube videos in an HTML5 video container and streams (with skip/skim/pause/resume) against an MP4 resource, and an (optional) userscript file can update YouTube pages with the HTML5 viewer. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported. Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."
Networking

Network Adapter Keeps Talking While a PC Is Asleep 188

Posted by timothy from the would-make-me-feel-better-about-keeping-a-server-on dept.
Al writes "Researchers at Microsoft and the University of California, San Diego have developed a network adapter that lets a computer enter sleep mode without disrupting the network connection. The adapter, dubbed Somniloquy (meaning to talk in one's sleep), consists of a gumstix running embedded Linux, 64MB of RAM and a 2G SD memory card, connected via USB. The adapter keeps the network connection going and the researchers have also developed a simplified IM client and bittorrent client that carry out more complicated tasks autonomously, only waking the computer if, for example, an actualy IM is received or a download is completed."
Games

Speaking With the Designer of an Indie MMO Project 104

Posted by Soulskill from the quite-ambitious dept.
PsxMeUP writes "Love is a persistent online first-person shooter that will let players build structures, permanently manipulate the environment and share resources — all in real-time. Action will be similar to a real-time strategy game as seen through the eyes of a grunt. The game is being completely designed by a man named Eskil Steenberg, and GameObserver had a chance to interview him. Steenberg talks about how all MMOs offer an egocentric experience where character growth is the most important aspect, and how he intends to change that. He also explains how mainstream MMOs have too many players, which basically trivializes accomplishments that have an impact on the entire server. 'If you imagine Civilization where you invent your stuff or build new stuff, imagine playing one of those characters on the ground doing that. And being able to do something minute in your world and see that impact in the major world,' Eskil explains, when asked what his game will be like. 'I want to scare people in a direction that is different from this sort of "me-centric" style of games. It feels that pretty much all games are going into that Diablo direction of collecting and building up my characters, and it's all very egocentric about creating your own powerful character,' he clarifies when asked how his game will be different from other MMOs. Love is well into development, and Steenberg has already posted some incredible gameplay demos. Levels, for instance, are all procedurally generated. The game also offers open-source tools, like UV editing — not a small feat considering the whole thing was designed by one man."

Comment Re:Uh huh. (Score 1) 1089

by merrickm (#28620221) Attached to: Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010
I imagine this is the sort of thing you'd try to sell not so much to individual users but to businesses- a business with a lot of employees on doing work on computers that has everything it needs its employees to do as a web app (or could have everything as a web app after, perhaps, paying Google to help them set that up) installs this thin-client OS on all their employee workstations and, assuming it works as well Google hopes, cuts down on IT headaches.
KDE

Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much? 542

Posted by kdawson from the billg-at-least-pretended-users-demanded-innovation dept.
jammag writes "The Linux desktop has seen major innovation of late, with KDE 4 launching new features, GNOME announcing a new desktop, and Ubuntu embarking on a redesign campaign. But Linux pundit Bruce Byfield asks, do average users really want any of these things? He points to instances of user backlash, and concludes 'Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them. The problem is, the days when users of free software were also its developers are long gone, but the habits of those days remain. The result is that developers function far too much in isolation from their user base.' Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing."

Comment porting to WINE? (Score 1) 470

by merrickm (#28080503) Attached to: Wine Project Frustration and Forking
I've wondered if the most useful application of WINE would not be necessarily its ability to sometimes sorta maybe run Windows apps on *nix systems as-is, but as a way for the developers of those Windows apps to more quickly and easily port them to other platforms (and thus an incentive for them to do so). Change everything about your program that doesn't already work with a given version of WINE so that it does, package the result with a copy of WINE (so that it won't be broken by later updates), and viola, you've got a Linux/OSX/whatever port of your software. Arguably inelegant, but in a lot of cases probably a lot more straightforward than porting from scratch.
Security

Infrared Fibers Can Protect Against Chemoterrorism 71

Posted by timothy from the movie-plot-waiting-to-happen dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Although most Americans take the safety of their drinking water for granted, ordinary tap water can become contaminated within minutes, says Prof. Abraham Katzir of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy who has developed a fiber-optic system that can detect poisons such as pesticides in water in amounts well below the World Health Organization safety threshold using 'colors' in the infrared spectrum which distinguish between pure and contaminated water. 'With our naked eyes we can't distinguish between pure water and water that contains a small amount of alcohol or acetone. They're all clear,' says Katzir. 'But we can clearly distinguish between liquids using an infrared spectrometer which can distinguish between "colors" in the invisible infrared spectrum.' Connected to a commercial infrared spectrometer, the fibers serve as sensors that can detect and notify authorities immediately if a contaminant has entered a water reservoir, system, building or pipeline. 'Toxic materials are readily available as pesticides or herbicides in the agriculture industry, and can be harmful if consumed even in concentrations as low as few parts per million,' says Katzir. Cities like New York are especially susceptible to a chemoterrorist threat. With many skyscrapers holding water reserves on the top of the building, a terrorist only needs to introduce poison into a tank to wreak havoc. 'A terrorist wouldn't have to kill tens of thousands of people. Only 50 deaths — as horrible as that would be — would cause nationwide panic,' says Katzir."

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