Comment Re:That IS Cecil (Score 1) 142
Huh? That facebook/chillze picture clearly shows the characters from FF2j.
Comment Re:Same with audio... (Score 1) 521
What does "signal below" mean? My understanding (which may have eroded over time) was that a digital sample of an analog signal can only accurately encode signal frequencies up to half of the sampling rate. Thus, if you can hear frequencies above 22050Hz then you should be able to hear the difference between a 44.1kHz sampling and, say, a 48kHz sampling of a source sound with frequencies above 22.05kHz.
Comment Old news (Score 1) 352
WTF, this is old news! There's even a link to the month-old story in the "related stories" box below the summary. Why is Slashdot posting a freakout story that makes it sound like it just came out of nowhere all of a sudden?
Comment Screenshots... (Score 1) 293
Screenshots or it didn't happen!
Comment Screen scraping (Score 1) 849
Lots of people are knocking TFA's suggestion due to over-the-shoulder vulnerability, but with the proliferation of malware I'd be more worried about malicious software screen scraping an unmasked password.
Submission + - The Simpsons: Worth More on Hulu than Fox (pcworld.com)
N!NJA writes: A tectonic shift has taken place for the digital age: ad rates for popular shows like The Simpsons and CSI are higher online than they are on prime-time TV. If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers. Online viewers have to actively seek out the program they want to watch, so advertisers end up with a guaranteed audience for their commercial every time someone clicks play on Hulu or TV.com. Online programs also have an average of 37 seconds of commercials during an episode, while prime-time TV averages nine minutes of ads.
The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S 238
Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."
Comment Obligatory (Score 1) 392
I don't have a door at work, you insensitive clod!
(yay cubicles)
Comment Logistics failure (Score 1) 834
I ended up not getting into the show because by the time I heard about it (yeah, I don't watch much TV) Fox wasn't hosting the first few episodes on their web site any more. It's not worth trying to jump into the middle of a strong story arc driven show like that (which was the problem with Babylon 5 as well, which I didn't get around to watching until around 4-5 years ago).
Story arc series like this are doomed (despite often being much deeper) because they can never hope to gain significant ratings after leaving behind people who didn't start watching from the beginning.
A History of 3D Cards From Voodoo To GeForce 320
Ant sends us to Maximum PC for an account of the history and current state of 3D video cards (single print page). "Try to imagine where 3D gaming would be today if not for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Without it, you wouldn't be [trudging] through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendor, nor would you be fending off endless hordes of fast-moving zombies at high resolutions. For that to happen, it takes a highly specialized chip designed for parallel processing to pull off the kinds of games you see today... Going forward, GPU makers will try to extend the reliance on videocards to also include physics processing, video encoding/decoding, and other tasks that [were] once handled by the CPU. It's pretty amazing when you think about how far graphics technology has come. To help you do that, we're going to take a look back at every major GPU release since the infancy of 3D graphics. Join us as we travel back in time and relive releases like 3dfx's Voodoo3 and S3's ViRGE lineup. This is one nostalgic ride you don't want to miss!"
Submission + - Hacker destroys avsim.com along with its backups
el americano writes: "Flight Simulator community website Avsim has experienced a total data loss after both of their online servers were hacked. The site's founder, Tom Allensworth, explained why 13 years of community developed terrains, skins, and mods will not be restored from backups, "Some have asked whether or not we had back ups. Yes, we dutifully backed up our servers every day. Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers. The hacker took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back up to remedy the situation.""
Submission + - Gamepark Release the GP2X Wiz (dcemu.co.uk)
Craig writes: Gamepark have officiallly released the follow up to its successful Linux handheld the GP2X, the GP2X Wiz is a 533Mhz Linux based handheld thats a similiar size to the GBA Micro with a touchscreen and 12 games preloaded into memory many of which are demos of commercial games, the system comes with 1gb of flash memory which can be expanded with sd cards. The Homebrew Community have already released ports of games such as Quake, Wolfenstein3d, Warcraft and emulators for Snes, Genesis, Commodore64 and the arcade emulator Mame.Will this threaten the PSP and DSI ?
Submission + - Suspicion on the FCC's Broadband Over Power Lines (arstechnica.com)
eldavojohn writes: Ars has a nice little post on the curious events surrounding the death of broadband over power lines (BPL). Trials and advances have been discussed on Slashdot many times but the Federal Communications Commission's go ahead has now been called into question by the American Radio Relay League who used a FOIA request to obtain non-redacted documents. The ARRL is concerned with receiver interference in their HAM radio operations and would like to see BPL stopped. These documents have interesting data points and other analysis that may cast doubt on BPL. After a federal court took a look at the FCC's study, a DC Court of Appeals judge noted, 'there is little doubt that the Commission deliberately attempted to exclude from the record evidence adverse to its position.'
Submission + - Daydreaming is really complex problem solving
beefsprocket writes: ScienceDaily reports that "A new University of British Columbia study finds that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that activity in numerous brain regions increases when our minds wander. It also finds that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving — previously thought to go dormant when we daydream — are in fact highly active during these episodes. "Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream — much more active than when we focus on routine tasks."
Submission + - Windows 7's disingenuous "Advantage" (pcpro.co.uk)
Barence writes: "An interesting blog about Microsoft's 'slimy' and 'sneaky' anti-piracy policies. Quote: "Last week, Microsoft announced some details of anti-piracy measures in Windows 7. It sounds like they're going to be slightly less intrusive than those in Vista, and probably roughly as effective. I don't exactly resent all this product validation stuff. I'd prefer it if Microsoft didn't feel the need to do it; but I accept that the company has a legitimate interest in dissuading casual copying, and to me a one-time online authorisation doesn't seem an unreasonable way of going about that. But I do resent all the weasel words and spin that surround the process.""
