meist3r writes "On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."

An Anonymous Coward writes "China's online gaming themed service industry appears to be booming, riding China's fascination with online gaming all the way to the top is a Chinese restaurateur with his World of Warcraft inspired eatery." I would recommend the Critter Bites and the Haunted Herring, but would warn against the Carrion Surprise.

TorrentFreak has posted some statistics on the most pirated games of the past year. Leading the list by a large margin is Spore, made infamous even before its release for the draconian DRM attached to the game. It was downloaded through BitTorrent roughly 1.7 million times, with The Sims 2 and Assassin's Creed following at just over a million each. (It's worth noting that Spore came out in September, so that figure is essentially for a mere three months.) GameSetWatch has posted a related piece discussing the countermeasures involved in dealing with piracy. It's the second article in a series about piracy; we discussed the first a couple days ago.

An anonymous reader writes "SIFO (a major Swedish survey company) has conducted a gaming survey right before the launch of Dreamhack Winter. One of the results is that gaming is bigger than football and hockey combined."

forrestm writes "At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra. At my university, I'm charged around 2.5c per megabyte. I rarely download anything big, but I often go through a large amount of bandwidth by simply browsing around. For example, when I play a YouTube video, click a link, and then return to the video, the whole video reloads. When I read some websites, such as BoingBoing.net or Cnet.com, my status bar shows a whole lot of data being transferred through other domains. Some pages seem to send/receive data at certain intervals for the duration of my visit. When I begin to enter a search in Firefox's search bar, a list of suggestions is automatically downloaded. In addition to this, Firefox often requests internet access of its own accord, even though I have automatic updating turned off. All this is costing me! How do I stop unsolicited use of my internet connection? How do I go about not wasting bandwidth like this?"

Homncruse sends in news of Bill Gates's new adventure, adding "I was working just one or two floors under this new office when it was all coming together. I even unknowingly shared an elevator with him at one time on his way up to the office." The article notes that the name "bgC3" derives from Bill Gates, catalyst, and the "third thing," neither Microsoft or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark. Public documents describe the new Gates entity — bgC3 LLC — as a 'think tank.' It's housed within a Kirkland office that the Microsoft co-founder established on his own after leaving his day-to-day executive role at the company this summer ... However, bgC3 will also oversee Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology. [An] insider said the goal isn't necessarily to create new companies, although ideas could be passed along to Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — or others — as it makes sense ..."

Barence writes "An open-source digital rights management (DRM) scheme says it's ready to supplant Apple and Microsoft as the world's leading copy protection solution. Marlin, which is backed by companies such as Sony and Samsung, has just announced a new partner program that aims to drive the DRM system into more consumer devices. 'It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage,' Talal Shamoon told PC Pro. 'It allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices.' When asked about the biggest problem of DRM — that customers hate it — he argued that 'the biggest problem with DRM is people have implemented it badly. Make DRM invisible and people will use it.'"

Slashdot has one of the best discussion systems there is. It's grown and adapted over the years to meet various challenges and suit the needs of our users. A lot of time and effort has gone into it and we are always open to user input to help make it better. Some of our best ideas start as user suggestions and we appreciate the feedback. Of course they can't all be gems and sometimes the suggestions we get are unworkable or just bizarre. Here are a few of my favorite unhelpful, helpful suggestions.