277293
submission
IckySplat writes:
From the BBC article
Puzzle Quest is a hypnotic 'violent' game
The debate around video games and violence rears its head every few months. But are the right questions being asked?
Ever caught yourself looking for good sniper spots after playing many hours of HitMan2
Driving like a maniac after GranTurismo?
Most people can separate the fantasy of games from real life.
But what about the people who can't?
159053
submission
elrous0 writes:
CNN, the Inquirer, et. al. are reporting that Europe's "Galileo" program is facing a serious financial and technical crisis and may be permanently stalled. The European program, designed to be a superior answer to the United States' "Global Positioning System" (GPS), has faced numerous hurdles since its incenption. To date, the Galileo program has succeeded in launching only one of its 30 planned satellites and has been beset by delays and cost overruns. Apparently, squabbling between the eight companies in the consortium behind the project is responsible for many of the problems. The project is now threatened with an EU takeover. But many are skeptical that even the EU can save the flagging program.
159031
submission
entrepreneur.md writes:
Medgadget.com is reporting on the world's first tetrapixel image developed by the leader in digital pathology technologies, Aperio Inc. Even more impressive than this trillion pixel image of breast cancer tissue, is the fact that Aperio has made an unprecedented move when it opened its brand new digital pathology imaging file format to the open source software community!
159027
submission
Anonymous UM Employee writes:
22000 records containing Social Security numbers have been stolen from a database at the University of Missouri. The records affected were of employees employed at any UM campus in 2004 and who had attended the University of Missouri — Columbia as students at any time before that. The compromised database was one used by IT services for tracking help desk quality.
See the Press Release or the IT Services QA page for more details.
This was the letter that I received:
Dear University of Missouri Employee:
A University of Missouri database was breached beginning May 3, compromising more than 22,000 names and social security numbers. Those affected include employees of any campus within the UM system during calendar year 2004 who were also current or former students at the Columbia campus.
Of those employees affected, nearly 9,000 are still employed by the University of Missouri. These employees will receive an individual e-mail outlining the specifics of the incident along with detailed instructions about how to proceed. Emails to affected employees have already been sent. If you did not already receive a separate email, you are not one of the employees affected and no further action is required.
The University of Missouri is committed to protecting the confidentiality of all employee information. A recent project has been in progress to remove social security numbers from university databases in an effort to avoid such breaches of confidentiality. As this extensive process continues, please be advised the university is doing everything possible to ensure the safety of its data.
For more information about the security breach, please access the Computer Security Web page that includes a question-and-answer section regarding the event at http://doit.missouri.edu/computersecurity.
158781
submission
IckySplat writes:
Seen on UK Yahoo
From TFA
Eccentric astronomer Sir Patrick Moore has claimed that TV is worse today because the BBC is run by
women.
Is he right? Is there a bigger market for blokes TV other than SKY sports?
"The trouble is that the BBC now is run by women and it shows: soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays.
I must admit there seems to be less and less on the tube these days
thats worth watching.
Am I just getting older, or could there be something here?
158697
submission
smooth wombat writes:
ABC and ESPN have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications Inc. to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the unusual condition that Cox disables the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads. This agreement only applies to Cox's video-on-demand service and will not affect viewers using digital video recorders to fast forward through ads.
In addition, the companies will also test technology that will place ads in shows based on ZIP Codes and geographic area.
146189
submission
armb writes:
From http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/diebold_v ote_da.html
"Problems found in an audit of Diebold tabulation records from an Ohio November 2006 election raise questions about whether the database got corrupted during the tabulation of election results"
They were using the Microsoft Jet engine, which Microsoft do not recommend for serious use with concurrent updates.
Perhaps most surprising of all, Diebold initially claimed that the raw election results were a protected trade secret.
146185
submission
OffTheLip writes:
Chinese meteorologists claim to be able to force rain (http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070425/ap/d8onm45g0.ht ml) to fall before the 2008 Olympics begin thus insuring clean, clear air for the games. After years of work on cloud seeding the meteorologists hope their efforts can improve the probability that rain will not fall during the events.
"Technicians with the Beijing Weather Modification Office said they fired seven rocket shells containing 163 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide over the city's skies. They claimed it provoked a chemical reaction in clouds that forced four-tenths of an inch of rain."
Beijing's air pollution is among the worst in the world but can this be a good thing?
