w1z7ard - Slashdot User

FCC's New Broadband Plan Prioritizes Competition 71

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @09:45PM from the plan-of-the-man dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has released an outline of what might be included in its upcoming national broadband plan, and encouraging competition was a top priority. The FCC statement said 'Competition drives innovation and provides consumer choice. Finding ways to better use existing assets, including Universal Service, rights-of-way, spectrum, and others, will be essential to the success of the plan. The limited government funding that is available for broadband would be best used when leveraged with the private sector.' The stimulus plan provided $7.2 billion in broadband grants and $350 million for a broadband mapping program, but also directed the FCC to deliver a national broadband plan to Congress by February 17, 2010."

Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @05:53PM from the vlc-generally-rocks dept.

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."

Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @05:29PM from the 9cm-edited dept.

sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"

America's Army Games Cost $33 Million Over 10 Years 192

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 10, 2009 @04:25AM from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.

Responding to a Freedom Of Information Act request, the US government has revealed the operating costs of the America's Army game series over the past decade. The total bill comes to $32.8 million, with yearly costs varying from $1.3 million to $5.6 million. "While operating America's Army 3 does involve ongoing expenses, paying the game's original development team isn't one of them. Days after the game launched in June, representatives with the Army confirmed that ties were severed with the Emeryville, California-based team behind the project, and future development efforts were being consolidated at the America's Army program office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. A decade after its initial foray into the world of gaming, the Army doesn't appear to be withdrawing from the industry anytime soon. In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'"

Comment Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score 1) 452

by w1z7ard on Monday November 30, 2009 @05:11AM (#30268116) Attached to: Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem

Also, the fact that high fructose corn syrup beverages are less expensive than water doesn't help either.

Comment Re:Society Expands Up to Constraints of the System (Score 1) 452

by w1z7ard on Monday November 30, 2009 @05:09AM (#30268094) Attached to: Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem

It's not just the availability of cheap food that leads to higher obesity among the poor. The quality of cheap food (eg. fast food, bread, rice, and questionable canned food) is likely the true cause.

Ubuntu 9.04 For the Windows Power User 727

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 21, 2009 @12:30PM from the because-you-can dept.

crazipper writes "Know a Windows power user who is (honestly) good with technology, but hasn't yet warmed to Linux? Tom's Hardware just posted a guide to installing and using Ubuntu 9.04, written specifically for the MS crowd (in other words, it talks about file systems, mount points, app installation, etc). Hopefully, by the end, your 'friend' will realize just how easy Ubuntu can be to use and start down a long path of exploration with a new operating system."

ioquake3 1.36 Goes Gold 176

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday April 30, 2009 @04:05AM from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

Time Doctor writes "The de-facto standard in Quake 3 engine technology, ioquake3, has hit version 1.36 recently. It includes a garbage bag full of improvements: in-game VOIP; optional external Mumble (voip); OpenAL; IPV6; anaglyph stereo rendering; Full x86-64 architecture support; Rewritten PowerPC JIT compiler, with ppc64 support; new SPARC JIT compiler, with support for both sparc32 and sparc64; improved console command auto-completion; persistent console command history; improved QVM (Quake Virtual Machine) tools; colored terminal output on POSIX operating systems; multiuser support on Windows systems (user-specific game data is stored in their respective Application Data folders); PNG format support for textures. Of course, there are even more fixes for security holes and other bugs in there. So, if you don't like ads and queues in your Quake 3 experience, get a copy of Quake 3 off Steam and copy your data files and key into your ioquake3 directory."

Does Professional Gaming Have a Future? 116

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 11, 2009 @06:41AM from the fatal-one-thank-you dept.

mr_sifter writes "Three years ago, celebrity gamers such as Fatal1ty were bagging millions in prizes, and TV channels were queuing up to broadcast games on TV. Professional gaming looked set for the big time. It never happened, and in the current economic crisis, sponsors and media organizations are cutting costs, resulting in the closure of many pro gaming competitions (as we recently discussed) and a down-scaling in prize money. This feature looks at whether pro gaming can bounce back, and whether it will always be a PC sport, or if pro gaming on consoles is the future."

Comment Re:Sounds lucrative.. (Score 1) 553

by w1z7ard on Sunday February 08, 2009 @10:29PM (#26778757) Attached to: Phantom OS, the 21st Century OS?

Yeah ... I was thinking the same thing. Good bye to C and Assembler? Ahhh, they mean goodbye to any low level hardware I/O or custom drivers ... nice.

There is an assembler called Phantasm, which would fill the niche you suggest is missing. Of course any alternative to C / assembler is viewed with skepticism due to non plausible coexistence with current systems / hardware.

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