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Toys

Building the LEGO MMO 116

Posted by Soulskill from the brick-by-brick dept.
Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with NetDevil's Ryan Seabury, creative director for LEGO Universe, which is due to launch next month. He talks about some of the difficulties in graphically optimizing a game with so many discrete, interactive objects, and mentions that they'll be keeping an eye out for inappropriate contructs to avoid problems similar to those that cropped up with Spore. "One thing we can say is when you build models you have your own property, and you can share that if you want to. If you share something publicly, it will be monitored by a human before it's seen by other people." Seabury also explains their desire to keep the game simple, using players' creativity as a driving force, as well as NetDevil's decision to stay away from a micro-transaction business model.
Patents

Submission + - Lexmark Sues 24 Co for Patents on Toner Cartridges (cnet.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Remember back in 2003 when Lexmark tried to use the DMCA to stop after market toner cartridges from being produced? Well, they're now suing 24 companies for infringing on 15 patents they have on toner cartridges. The article also notes that Lexmark has been filing lawsuits over patent infringement on formulas for their inks.
Oracle

Submission + - Goodbye OpenSolaris

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: It seems the death knell has well and truly sounded for OpenSolaris, leading to the dissolution of OGB.

In OGB's meeting yesterday, the group decided to dissolute following a motion that was made by former OGB chairman John Plocher, and "unanimously (but sadly) adopted."
The decision was blamed on Oracle no longer giving any support to the project,and was widely expected, with one well known OpenSolaris commenter blogging with the title "OpenSolaris is dead" just last week.
Robotics

Submission + - Frog-powered robotic sensor (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What do you get if you cross a genetically-modified frog cells with an electronic nose? A robot that can smell moth pheromones, reports New Scientist. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have built a robot which shakes its head when a sample of moth perfume is injected in to its nostrils.

Submission + - 3D Sex and Zen (dontpaniconline.com)

Submitted by agatharuiz
agatharuiz writes: Last week there was a story about the porn industry's wary turn towards 3D, but now the first movie is officially in the works:

"The idea has originated in Hong Kong, where producers are hoping to revive the porn industry. It’s been essentially ripped apart by the world of amateur internet exposure, and director Christopher Sun seems to think that this is the best way to hit back. The film’s a $3million dollar epic and it’s about some young guy in some vague historical era who meets some people, or something. The plotline is probably not going to be the most important part.

"Somehow when you're doing a 3-D movie you always want to make an impressive image because the viewers ... are going to buy tickets with double or even triple the ticket price to get into a world they've never seen before," says Sun. “It’s not just erotica, they want some ‘wow factor’!” Of course, because why else would anyone watch porn, except for the wow factor?"
Security

Submission + - DEFCON Survey Reveals Vast Scale Of Cloud Hacking (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An in-depth survey carried out amongst 100 of those attending this year's DEFCON conference in Las Vegas recently has revealed that an overwhelming 96 percent of the respondents said they believed the cloud would open up more hacking opportunities for them. When you factor in the prediction from numerous analysts that at the start of 2010 20 percent of businesses would have their IT resources in the cloud within four years, you begin to appreciate the potential scale and complexity of the security issues involved.
GUI

Submission + - Windows 95 Turns 15

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 15 years ago on this day, Microsoft's then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today's "social desktop", I'd much rather have the simpler and more sparese (pre Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials.

Submission + - Autonomous flight in GPS denied environment (suasnews.com)

Submitted by garymortimer
garymortimer writes: During AUVSI 2010 Adaptive Flight demonstrated autonomous flight in a GPS-denied environment with their Hornet Micro UAV at AUVSI. This state of the art,
and market first capability allows the micro-UAV to transition from outdoor navigation to indoor navigation at the touch of a button, opening up a broad range of applications for these vehicles.

Comment Re:It doesn't help the passwords are well known (Score 1) 429

by Zuzzy (#33228154) Attached to: Apple Outs Anti-Jailbreak Update

Are you sure that there isn't an su and you just don't have any ability to run ie (ie command line access) - I don't think the jailbreak updates the OS to include su, you just can't access the terminal.

Either way, thats not my point, what I meant was that if you have an exploit like the PDF exploit and are able to run arbitrary code, then you can su and the root password is known

Does anyone know if the jailbreak requires the root password to be alpine to work?

Comment If that works... (Score 1) 1

by Zuzzy (#33227448) Attached to: North Korea Offers To Pay Debt In Ginseng

..I'm going to drop into my bank and offer to clear my overdraft with some herbs I found in the fridge. Why did I never think of that before?!

Govt official: Prsident, I have secured payment of north korea's debts. I have 300 thousand tonnes of ginseng arriving tomorrow
President: We make heavy machinery. We make trucks. We make trams. WHat do we want a life supply of dietary supplements for? If we wee in Korea you would be doing hard labor now.

Comment It doesn't help the passwords are well known (Score 2, Interesting) 429

by Zuzzy (#33227210) Attached to: Apple Outs Anti-Jailbreak Update

I still am amazed that Apple releases the iPhone code with simple, easy to discover passwords that are the same across every device. That is UNIX rule 101 - "protect root". Knowing the password means that if you can execute arbitrary code on the iPhone via any means, you can su to root and break out of the user space security protection. User priviledge controls have been the basis of UNIX security for as long as UNIX has been around (as it has been for most OSs to more or less a degree)

If the iPhone had random root passwords on each device, and used certificates to trust iTunes, the risk of a driveby attack doing permanent (ie surviving reboot) damage must be lower? Or have I missed something obvious here?

Comment Re:Diesel (Score 1) 1141

by Zuzzy (#33136714) Attached to: My Automobile Gets __ MPG

And my Audi A3 (2.0 TD) does 0.60 in 7.2 and has similar mpg to these. I have had it for 2 years, I generally drive at 5mph in cities (sigh) or 100mph everywhere else and hve an average (according to the trip computer) of 43mpg over that time.

What amazes me about this poll, being from the UK, is that the most common result in the poll was mid 20s. Over here, to get mid 20s you have to be driving an very old Jeep or a seriously fast car.

Now, I know that /. is an IT hangout but surely not everyone is driving Ferraris?!

My new petrol A3 (1.8T automatic) will average over 45mpg, and thats bad these days for a new car

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