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The Military

Submission + - Panetta Says Defeat of Al Qaeda 'Within Reach'

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Newly installed Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan, says the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda” and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Panetta, who rarely spoke on the record as CIA director, offered few details to bolster his assessment but intelligence officials say that computer files retrieved from Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that the organization was in dire need of money and struggling under persistent American drone strikes on its leadership. “I think now is the moment,” says Panetta. “I do believe that if we continue this effort, we can really cripple Al Qaeda as a threat to this country.”"
Movies

Submission + - Space Invaders the Movie (hollywoodreporter.com)

rainmouse writes: Hollywood, clearly after witnessing the staggering success and endless critical acclaim of other computer game adaptations with their typically engrossing story line and deep, believable character development, have now apparently picked up the rights to make a film based upon Space Invaders. "The classic 1980s arcade game from Taito and Midway, which is ranked as the top arcade game of all time by Guinness World Records, is heading to the big screen courtesy of producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Odd Lot Entertainment’s Gigi Pritzker."

Comment TFA is unclear, but this is blasphemous if true (Score 2) 239

Thie whole Idea is just wrong... Playing/singing along to recorded music is how every musician I have ever met/seen/played with has gotten their start and found their passion for music. Furthermore, Performing songs that everybody already knows is how most bands learn to play with each other, Cover band is the next progression. Many a high-school garage band I have seen belt out "Classics" Cover bands is the way to go, if said musician actually believes s/he can make a career, or even money at all, playing music. The next wedding you go to, ask the band if they paid their royalties... Is every musician going to have to pay royalties for performing these songs? What about music teachers? I took lessons for 6 years on the drums, maybe a third of the time was spent on rudimentary things, the rest was "see/ hear that?, watch me do it, and then you try" Learning how to adapt was everything, and this cannot be done without examples.... are they too stealing the recording? Although TFA might be a bit off, would like to see the actual wording used. If it is only stuff uploaded to the web, I dont necesarrily agree, but I can understand the concept. If you upload a video on YouTube, you are, as far as the way most of these laws were written, a broadcaster, and subject to those terms. Though it seems they can't keep up anyway, so it may be a moot point, You are not profiting from the theft of Intellectual Property, but Google is, for every song/video that they don't have an agreement to host. Of course they have no problem deleting videos to stay within the law, someone else will upload it or something nearly the same very soon and it will be online till the cycle repeats.

Comment hmmm great idea poor execution. (Score 1) 172

From a "real" guitar player, I Find this quite interesting, and honestly, is what I was craving from music games. It's like Powertab with a score at the end. Too bad it's not the first, and the games never came to fruition like guitar tabs do. I can't go find a song, find someone else's interpretation of it, and learn to play it how the "real" guitar players do. I never got the chance to use a MIDI guitar, which is basically what this game converts your guitar into, I'd imagine. The possibilities with those are endless, I've seen and heard great stuff. At the very least, This technology should be exploitable to that end, I believe. Anyone know? It'd probably be a real simple MIDI controller, but it'd be enough for any savvy OSS user, with the plethora of free studio tools available.

Comment Re:Regardless (Score 1) 742

BAD's first post made me think of a parent giving their child their smartphone to play with while they are shopping. I couldn't figure why people were asking for his information and such. If it keeps him/her entertained, why not, with supervision, of course. it would certainly free up shopping trips which can be hard with a kid acting-up for everyone involved, parents, other customers, and employees, who in my experience can be fired for saying the wrong thing to, or in front of customers, all it takes is one complaint of that nature.
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 4 Beta 7 is Fast and Fleet (mozilla.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has released Firefox 4 Beta 7. The release notes lists a number of areas which have seen improvement in this release: 1. Uses JägerMonkey, a new, faster JavaScript engine. 2. WebGL is enabled by default on Windows and Mac OS X. WebGL support requires an OpenGL-capable graphics card. Support for other graphics cards on Windows (specifically Intel GPUs) and Linux will be coming in a future beta. 3. Certain rendering operations are now hardware-accelerated using Direct3D 9 on Windows XP, Direct3D 10 on Windows Vista and 7, and OpenGL on Mac OS X. 4. Improved web typography using OpenType with support for ligatures, kerning and font variants. 5. HTML5 Forms API makes web based forms easier to implement and validate.

Comment se the problem with teaching math is (Score 1) 1153

i think the problem is math is taught backwards, if at all correctly. I have never once in class found out how or why the formula's and expressions and equations were created. Never. Yet, almost all math I've found has had real-world implications, even in theory to the mathematicians who created it. In my experience, this was even more evident in higher-math courses such as calculus, where proofs were done with the same attitude as simple arithmetic. it got to a point where you didnt ask why, you just did the work and handed it in, knowing the theories and concepts with no real way to think about them. Were it not for my luck in several corresponding courses in calculus, biology, and several string theory and game theory specials courtesy of the Disovery Channel and PBS, I doubt I would ever have thought of the simple beauty of math and it as the ultimate language. Math is the one connecting function of everything, even in say, literature, timing is key to a great story, now how do you express time and its relations to other times? Math is important, theoretical math doubly so: Experimental and theoretical math is the boundary pusher of math and science, the two go hand-in-hand at that level. this is the concept that is lost when math becomes commonplace. all math started as a radical new idea of thinking, of explaining and analyzing. to me theoretical math is the benchmark that shows the boundary of human thought. To me somebody who cannot realize the importance of math, especially theoretical math and its relation to science has no right using a computer, which is above all designed to aide in these respects. we have computers to do math.... i.e. we give them rules and an equation to solve. we are now free to become creative mathematicians because we dont have to do the legwork until we get the right answer from the computer.

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