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Comment Ogre (Score 1) 237

by znigelz (#38504294) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Tools For Teaching High School Kids How To Make Games?

http://www.ogre3d.org/

Ogre is a 3D rendering engine with a very large community based around it. We used it for a proof of concept for a real-time simulator, and there were few limitations we faced in using it. It might not be as clean as unity, but it has more flexibility in licensing, as long as you don't might copy left, which in your situation you shouldn't. Actually, I just looked and it seems they made the switch to the MIT licence.

The proof of concept was actually a major improvement over the production simulator, but of course business politics always wins in the end.

Comment Newfoundland/Labrador (Score 1) 254

by znigelz (#37149644) Attached to: Rare Earth Restrictions To Raise Hard Drive Cost
Our rare earth mines are just getting started. But the deposits are huge. It may be a couple years before it relaxes the market, but by no means do they control the rare earth market. They want you to think that to inflate demand. There are lots of other sources all over Canada being surveyed (and all over the united states for that matter http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/08/04/1857220/Rare-Earth-Deposit-Discovered-In-US)
Nintendo

Submission + - Hackers Attack Nintendo (wsj.com)

Submitted by Dr Herbert West
Dr Herbert West writes: From WSJ:
Nintendo said today said Sunday that a server for its U.S. unit's website had been hacked into but that no company or customer information was compromised.

The hacker group Lulzsec, which allegedly was behind other breaches of Sony websites earlier this week, claimed responsibility.

Lulzsec posted a server configuration file as proof of its involvement yet said it wasn't targeting Nintendo. "We just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm," the group said this morning via its Twitter. "Nintendo had already fixed it anyway.
The attack comes as Nintendo this week launches its new online service for its 3DS hand-held game machine.
Microsoft

Submission + - Pranksters Post Giant Windows Logo on Apple Store 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Working calmly in broad daylight and filming their efforts for YouTube posterity, a fake construction crew attached a large Microsoft Windows logo to the black facade of a soon-to-open Hamburg Apple Store. Neat hack in the MIT vein, but next time the crew might want to take along a pic of the Windows logo — with the adrenaline flowing, some of the colors got rearranged and were hung upside down.
Education

Submission + - India's Schooling Experiment Tests Rich and Poor

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Passed in 2009, India's Right to Education Act mandates that private schools set aside 25% of admissions for low-income, underprivileged and disabled students. Many of the world's top private schools offer scholarships to smart poor kids, but India's plan is more sweeping in that the rules prohibit admission-testing of students. 'Over the years schooling offered by these two systems [public and private] has become increasingly disparate and unequal,' explained Anshu Vaish of the Dept. of Human Resource Development. But the most notable results of the experiment thus far, reports the WSJ, are frustration and disappointment as separations that define Indian society are upended, leading even some supporters to conclude that the chasm between the top and bottom of Indian society is too great to overcome. Hey, at least we don't have these kinds of problems in the US, right? BTW, about 30% of this year's Intel Science Talent Search 2011 Finalists hailed from private schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,750 at Ursuline Academy (the alma mater of Melinda Gates) to $37,020 at Groton School (the alma mater of FDR). Some 10% of all elementary and secondary school students were in private schools in 2009-2010, according to the US Dept. of Education.

Submission + - Strong Aurora Borealis show visible in N-Hemi. (spaceweather.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An unusually strong aurora borealis show is occuring due to a geomagnetic storm related to solar activity from a few days ago.
Currently many somewhat dark locations that are often unable to see auroral activity are now able to do so — north-eastern canada, north-eastern USA, and parts of north-western Europe are currently possible viewing locations for the show. As time progresses, semi-dark areas in the west coast area of North Amreica may be able to see the show as night falls in those areas unless the show subsides, though it may also grow in magnitude at any time over night.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/Aurora/globeNW.html
http://www.spaceweather.com/

Comment They Are Not the Only Ones (Score 2) 181

by znigelz (#36300848) Attached to: AMD Betting Future On the GPGPU

AMD are far from the only company to make this bet. For one, the bet is backed by Apple, who are the creators of OpenCL. Nvidia have a GPU computing SDK with full support for OpenCL for all major platforms. Even Intel has just recently provided Linux drivers for OpenCL, and have supported windows for a while. ARM will have an implementation soon for their Mali GPU architecture.

I use OpenCL for nonlinear wave equations. There may only be a few OpenCL developers at the moment, but with articles like this, the community will only grow larger. Anybody else out there? What do you use it for?

Comment My Cocktail Mix for Delusional Conspiracism (Score 1) 201

by znigelz (#36067244) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Alternatives To Tor Browser Bundle For Windows?
Firefox in privacy mode with NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere, Better Privacy, Tor Button extension for Tor and Privoxy, an ip filter (linux: ipblock, windows: peerblock), FlagFox extension to always have a visual cue where the server is located, and a system firewall rejecting everything but the specific ports that you use (22, 80, 443, other program specific ports, etc). If I really was worried about privacy, I would also connect across free online VPN (from your own first world country preferably). It may be possible to daisy chain a few vpns (and also a few proxy servers for that matter), but I'm not really that interested in security. Plus an intrusion detection and prevention system like Snort using a log viewer.

Submission + - Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space - NASA Sci (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
Phoghat
Phoghat writes: "More than 30 years after they were launched, NASA's two Voyager probes have traveled to the edge of the solar system and are on the doorstep of interstellar space.
Today, April 28, 2011, NASA held a live briefing to reflect on what the Voyager mission has accomplished--and to preview what lies ahead as the probes prepare to enter the realm of the Milky Way itself."
Canada

Submission + - Wikileaks Says Public Forced Canadian DMCA Delay (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that a new Wikileaks cable confirms that the Canadian Conservative government delayed introducing a Canadian DMCA in early 2008 due to public opposition. The U.S. cable notes confirmation came directly from then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who told U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins that cabinet colleagues and Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral implications of copyright reform.
Government

Submission + - Does China's Cyber Offense Obscure Woeful Defense? (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: The official line in Washington D.C. is that there's a new Cold War brewing, with an ascendant China in the place of the old Soviet Union, and cyberspace as the new theater of war. But work done by an independent security researcher suggests that the Chinese government is woefully unprepared to fend of cyber attacks on its own infrastructure.

Submission + - Rumors of Higgs boson discovery at LHC (livescience.com)

Submitted by Magnifico
Magnifico writes: LiveScience is reporting that scientists are abuzz over a controversial rumor that the 'God particle' has been detected by a particle-detection experiment at LHC at CERN.

The Higgs boson "rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic... The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong."

This could be a flat-out hoax or a statistical anomaly or... confirmation of the particle that bestows mass on all the other particles.
Google

Submission + - Google Will Save Videos After All (blogspot.com)

Submitted by don9030582
don9030582 writes: After Google announced it would permanently shutter its Google Videos collection, dozens of volunteers from around the world sprung unto action in a massive attempt to make a copy of the entire site. Originally slated to go dark on April 29th, now they have eliminated any such deadline and furthermore they will be migrating the collection to YouTube. We wish Google would have planned to do that from the beginning, but ultimately this is a victory for the preservation of user-generated content on the Internet.

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