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Games

Is the Gaming PC Dead? 417

Posted by Soulskill from the no-way-dude-check-out-my-$8000-alienware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Rahul Sood, HP's CTO of gaming, argues that the days of a market that wants PCs running three $500 GPUs is history; he argues that it's really a tough or impossible sell. '... let's face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value. This is why you don't see ridiculous offerings like Quad SLI and 2-kilowatt power supplies coming from our company.' But don't the ideas of customization and market pricing for components tend to undercut that? Is the gaming PC dead?"
Patents

FOSS Community Can Combat Bad Patents 58

Posted by kdawson from the layers-of-barbed-wire dept.
An anonymous reader lets us know about a new initiative designed to help shield the open source software community from threats posed by patent trolls. The initiative, called Linux Defenders (the website is slated to go live tomorrow, Dec. 9), is sponsored by a consortium of technology companies including IBM. "The most novel feature of the new program... will be its call to independent open source software developers all over the world to start submitting their new software inventions to Linux Defenders... so that the group's attorneys and engineers can, for no charge, help shape, structure, and document the invention in the form of a 'defensive publication.' Linux Defenders will then also see to it that the publication, duly attributing authorship of the invention to the developer who submitted it, is filed on the IP.com Web site, a database used by the US Patent and Trademark Office and other patent examiners throughout the world when they are trying to determine whether a proposed patent is truly novel..."
NASA

Pieces Coming Together For NASA's New Spacecraft 78

Posted by Soulskill from the fly-me-to-the-moon dept.
Matt_dk points out an update on the progress of development for NASA's Ares I launch rocket, excerpting: "NASA is using powerful computers and software programs to design the rocket that will carry crew and cargo to space after the space shuttle retires. But those computers will have their work checked the old-fashioned way with the first of several uncrewed demonstration launches beginning in 2009. Ares I-X, the first Ares I test rocket, will lift off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. in the summer of 2009. It will climb about 25 miles in a two-minute powered test of Ares I first stage performance and its first stage separation and parachute recovery system." Reader coondoggie notes that NASA is also looking further afield, putting out the call for ideas on moon colonization. They'll be offering a variety of grants for projects which facilitate human activities that are "not reliant on Earth's resources."
Censorship

Largest Aussie ISP Agrees To "Ridiculous" Net-Filter Trial 231

Posted by timothy from the may-you-get-what-you-desire dept.
Klootzak writes "Michael Malone, head of Australia's largest ISP iiNet announced today that his company would sign up to the Government's live trials of the Great Firewall of Australia. In an article published by The Age, Mr Malone is quoted calling Stephen Conroy 'The worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.' Despite at first giving the impression that iiNet is rolling over like a good Government puppy the article quotes Mr Malone saying that the reasons for participating in this trial is to show how unfeasible and stupid it is — Quoted from the article: 'Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicizing it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicizing it.' Let's hope that in typical fashion of government-instigated Internet-filtering that this stupid idea is just as useless, inefficient and ineffectual as the last one, and that the Australian Government realizes this before wasting more taxpayer dollars on it (seeing as the first attempt only cost taxpayers $84,000,000)."

Comment Re:The BASIC of the 21st century (Score 1) 523

by nidarus (#25530759) Attached to: PHP Gets Namespace Separators, With a Twist

PHP ? Real OO? Thanks for the great joke. How can I add methods to Number? Ehm you know, the class used for numbers... In order to write 3.times() for instance... ah, it doesn't exist?

OK, and how do you do this (add methods to existing classes) in C++ or Java? What, there's no simple way to do it? And... you do know that both of those (incredibly popular, OOP) languages have non-object basic types?

Or maybe you're just one of those Smalltalk snobs. Wait... it's probably not it, because you apparently don't see the point of OOP at all, except for modifying basic types (which is usually a BAD idea, even if your language supports it).

And, FYI, there are many PHP-based projects that do use OOP. For example, CakePHP and its ilk, and I understand that Joomla has gone OOP as well (drupal is still implements its own crazy system though). What's more, since many web frameworks use OOP, the average PHP programmer has a very good chance of using "real" OOP as well.
Transportation

People Prefer Angry-Faced Cars 473

Posted by timothy from the researchers-like-to-anthropomorphize dept.
fatalfury writes "Researchers from the University of Vienna asked 20 males and 20 females to rank vehicles based on their appearance. The list of traits included arrogant, afraid, agreeable, disgusted, extroverted, sad, and others. Cars with 'meaner' traits (such as BMW) ranked higher, whereas cars with 'nicer' traits (such as Toyota's Prius) ranked lower. With billions spent on developing new products in the automobile industry, this could spur a trend in meaner-looking cars and perhaps explain why sales of the Prius and other green cars are slow to take off with average consumers."
Government

Linux-Based E-Voting In Brazil 302

Posted by kdawson from the watch-and-learn-grasshopper dept.
John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail Screenshot-sm 206

Posted by samzenpus from the the-old-ball-and-chain dept.
Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family. Instead of asking me to help fix your relationship maybe you should try playing with your kids, talking to your wife, and not staring at a computer screen all day. You should realize that the help link doesn't provide help with your life. It's mostly for getting passwords and stuff. Below you'll find a collection of people that should have reached out to Dr. Phil and not Dr. Sam.
The Internet

Mac Users' Internet Experience to Retain Same Fonts 282

Posted by CowboyNeal from the keep-on-truckin' dept.
thefickler sent in this article that opens, "Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts. Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts," and are therefore widely used by Internet developers."

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