readthemall - Slashdot User

Submission + - Team Fortress 2 goes free to play (steampowered.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24, 2011 @08:09AM

An anonymous reader writes: With the new update the Valves popular shooter Team Fortress 2 goes Free to Play on Steam. All revenue for the game from now on will be made from the store in-game.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 5, Insightful) 398

by readthemall on Friday June 24, 2011 @07:44AM (#36553276) Attached to: Who Killed the Netbook?

Exactly, every time I go to a shop at least 1/3 of the portable computers sold are netbooks. With prices about half of the cheapest 14"+ laptops they are very good choice in a poor European country, and perhaps in many other parts of the world. And unlike spartphones, netbooks are real computers that can be actively used for many hours both for creating and consuming content.

Submission + - Kids Hacking Conference raises BIG questions (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Friday June 24, 2011 @07:27AM

mikejuk writes: A Reuters news item "Forget Spy Kids, try kiddie hacker conference" has been widely circulated on the Internet, attracting a lot of attention on the strength of its title. The story, that an event for 8-16 year olds is being organized alongside Defcon 19, also led to some concern being raised on the Defcon Forums -
"Has Defcon really become tame enough so that 8-16 year olds won't be traumatized by what they see?"
So kids at Defcon? Good, bad or irrelevant? And is the old guard simply afraid of the kids and perhaps also what they might do?

Submission + - Indie Game: The Movie (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Friday June 24, 2011 @07:06AM

eldavojohn writes: For the acclaimed independent games out there, not a whole lot is known about how much time the developers sink into those titles. If EA is forcing its legions of employees into insanely long shifts, what must a handful of people go through to release even the smallest of titles? Well, two independent film makers named James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajo have tried to capture that in a film called Indie Game: The Movie. The documentary with artsy shots showcases titles in progress while simultaneously telling the success stories of Braid and Super Meant Boy. The trailer shows promise for a heart wrenching story of failure and success in what is undoubtedly an extremely difficult task.

Submission + - How to recover a partially overwritten file

Submitted by

Tolar

on Friday June 24, 2011 @06:04AM

Tolar writes: "Yesterday I managed to overwrite an 11GB file with a 24kB one (forgetting to change the output filename when using mencoder [mencoder -o Filename.avi Filename.avi ]). I did try it with foremost but as I feared it cannot find it since the first couple of kB are overwritten already. Now setting aside that it is stupid that mencoder lets you do this in the first place does anyone know if there's some way to recover this from my ext3 filesystem — without a lot of effort since it's only a TV-recording (of a live-show but still not important enough to warrant hours and hours of work). I did poke around with debugfs a bit, but since it is not just a case of a file accidentally rm'd I cannot see any inodes marked as deleted that I could then try to recover."

Submission + - US ISPs, Big Content Reaching Antipiracy Agreement (cnet.com)

Submitted by Chaonici on Friday June 24, 2011 @04:07AM

Chaonici writes: The word on cnet is that an antipiracy agreement between a number of ISPs (including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast) and the RIAA & MPAA is nearing completion. Under the agreement, ISPs will step up their responses to copyright infringement complaints against subscribers. If a subscriber accumulates enough complaints, the ISP can throttle their bandwidth, limit their Web access to only the top 200 websites, and/or require participation in a "copyright awareness" program that explains the rights of content creators. ISPs and rights holders will share the costs of the system. Ars Technica confirms the story with notes from an industry source, who mentions that the Obama administration is "generally supportive" of the agreement.

Submission + - Team Fortress 2 now free-to-play ! (gamerpeek.com)

Submitted by querbeet on Friday June 24, 2011 @02:40AM

querbeet writes: In an interview with Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker says that the company has decided to make the popular class-based shooter completely free-to-play...

Submission + - Data-Mining Ban Struck Down by US Supreme Court (medpagetoday.com) 1

Submitted by smitty777 on Thursday June 23, 2011 @03:10PM

smitty777 writes: The Supreme Court struck down Sorrell vs IMS Health, a law banning data mining which has been in place since 2007. The court ruled that the data on medications prescribed by doctors is protected by the First Amendment and can be used for marketing by the pharmaceutical companies. This follows similar declarations in Maine and New Hamshire.

Submission + - How do I scrub pirated music from my collection? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22, 2011 @07:55AM

An anonymous reader writes: I tried out Google Music, and I liked it. Google made me swear that I won't uploading any "illegal" tracks, and apparently people fear Apple's iCloud turning into a honeypot for the RIAA. My music collection comprises about 90% "legal" tracks now--legal meaning tracks that I paid for--but I still have some old MP3s kicking around from the original Napster. Moreover, I have a lot of MP3s that I downloaded because I was too lazy to rip the CD version that I own.

I wanted to find a tool to scan my music to identify files that may be flagged as having been pirated by these cloud services; I thought such a tool would be free and easy to find. After all, my intent is to search my own computer for pirated music and to delete it--something that the RIAA wants the government to force you to do. But endless re-phrasing on Google leads to nothing but instructions for how to obtain pirated music.

Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?

Submission + - Miyamoto on Wii U Power (techtroids.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @07:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: Gaming legend Shigeru Miyamoto has discussed the Wii U’s power and other aspects of the new home console.

Submission + - Firefox 5 Benchmarked, Faster & Better than ev (digitizor.com)

Submitted by dkd903 on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @07:24AM

dkd903 writes: Firefox 5 is scheduled for release tomorrow. However, users of the beta channel have already got their hands on it. One of the promises for Firefox 5 is better performance. We took tested Firefox 5 and benchmarked it against two other browsers — Google Chrome and Opera. We used the latest version of Google Chrome from the beta channel and the latest stable version of Opera — Opera 11.11.

Submission + - Is Ubuntu on the way out? (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Thinkcloud on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @07:11AM

Thinkcloud writes: It has slipped behind Linux Mint and Fedora in the disrtrowatch page for the first time in 6 months. Does that indicate a changing demographics in the Penguin land, or a market repositioning by Canonical or something else? Users opinion is varied in this regard. You could also be part of this debate in the upcoming TuxRadar podcast

Submission + - ICANN Domain Expansion Could Increase Phishing (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1 on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @06:37AM

Orome1 writes: The ICANN board gave final approval to what some are calling “the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades” allowing the expansion of new TLDs. Some argue this ICANN initiative could force a land grab of domains by businesses to protect their company reputation. However, they aren’t the only ones who are likely to try to snag these new top level domains. There’s a very legitimate concern that cybercriminals could also seek these new domains to create legitimate looking websites using well-known brand names. These can then be used for phishing attacks or delivery of Trojan malware to unsuspecting visitors.

Submission + - ICANN Votes to Open the Domain Name Floodgates (webpronews.com)

Submitted by mvar on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @06:37AM

mvar writes: Internet domain name overlords ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) have voted on and approved today to open up the world of domain endings to include just about anything a person’s heart desires. The margin was 13-1 with two abstaining. Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are currently limited to 22 across the internet. They include your basic .com, .org and .net as well as some more specific endings you have probably seen around the interwebs like .uk and .eu. Now, the ICANN will be lifting almost all the restrictions on gTLDs.

Not only will domain registers be able to choose almost any word in the English language, but the ICANN will also approve domain names in any sort of characters – like Cyrillic or Kanji.

Submission + - Exploring the Abuse Tolerated by Female Gamers (bit-tech.net)

Submitted by arcticstoat on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @05:49AM

arcticstoat writes: If you want any more proof that feminism still has a long way to go, you only need to look at the illiterate misogyny that's inherent in online gaming trash talk. This exploration of the issue reveals the abuse that online female gamers have to tolerate, resulting in many pretending to be male while they're gaming, while others never return to online gaming, which has the knock-on effect of reinforcing the stereotype that women just don't like games. Example comments include ‘suck a big fat cock slut’, ‘you fat f**king tomboy go kill yourself’ and ‘u no ur an ugly girl wen u play xbox’.

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