Comment Re:Julian Assange (Score 1) 317
Wish there was a "Share this on facebook" button for comments...
Comment Re:Google Wave, Anyone? (Score 2, Interesting) 240
The similarities to Wave were the first thing that came to my mind. As an aside, I think Google should have blended wave into gmail, not had them side-by-side. None-the-less, I have to think some of this had to been cooking long before the google guy jumped ship - there just hasn't been enough time to design/build/test a change this big to their service, imho... unless I'm underestimating how robust their agile development processes are. . .
Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life 486
scottbomb sends in this feel-good story of an engineer-hero, calling it "one of the coolest stories I've read in a long time." "A manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program, Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast. Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — 'there was no time to take a vote' — Innes kicked into engineer mode. 'Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,' Innes explained."
Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty Black Ops Edition 102
gadgetking writes "When I first saw this I thought it was a joke — the Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition. Seriously? I mean I like my COD first person shooter game as much as the next nerd but this really shows how mainstream video games have become. From the article: 'The Jeep brand today announced it has been named exclusive automotive partner by Activision for Call of Duty: Black Ops, and that they're making a COD Jeep. Hitting show floors next month, this limited-edition Jeep Wrangler will be available for a MSRP of $30,625 for the two-door model and $33,500 for the four-door. The 2011 Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition comes standard with "aggressive 32-inch tires, unique military style and Call of Duty graphics."'"
Sony Gets Nasty With PSBreak Buyers 246
YokimaSun writes "The war between hackers and Sony over the PlayStation 3 has now taken an even more sinister turn, with Sony going after not just shops but actual buyers of the PSBreak dongle, threatening them with fines of many thousands of Euros and forcing them to sign cease-and-desist letters. It seems Sony will use any means necessary to thwart both homebrew and piracy on the PS3."
Blizzard Suing Creators of StarCraft II Hacks 385
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
"Blizzard have taken the extremely peculiar decision to ban players from playing StarCraft II for using cheats in the single-player game. This meant that, despite cheating no one but themselves, they were locked out of playing the single-player game. Which is clearly bonkers. But it's not enough for the developer. Blizzard's lawyers are now setting out to sue those who create cheats. Gamespot reports that the megolithic company is chasing after three developers of hacks for 'destroying' their online game. It definitely will be in violation of the end user agreement, so there's a case. However, it's a certain element of their claim that stands out for attention. They're claiming using the hacks causes people to infringe copyright: 'When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.'"
Blizzard used similar reasoning in their successful lawsuit against the creators of a World of Warcraft bot.
3dfx Voodoo Graphic Card Emulation Coming To DOSBox 156
KingofGnG writes with this excerpt from King Arthur's Den: "One of the forthcoming versions of the best PC-with-DOS emulator out there should include a very important architectural novelty, ie the software implementation of the historical Voodoo Graphics chipset created by 3dfx Interactive in the Nineties. "Kekko", the programmer working on the project with the aid of the DOSBox crew and the coding-capable VOGONS users, says that his aim is the complete and faithful emulation of SST-1, the first Voodoo chipset marketed in 1996 inside the first 3D graphics accelerated cards on the PC."
Submission + - Alpine Linux 2 Review (linuxbsdos.com)
Fini Decima writes: "Alpine Linux is a distribution in the Firewall & Router category. It features its own package manager, a no-frills, text-based installation script, and an intuitive, browser-based management interface. It may be used for just about any purpose within any network.
This article presents a detailed, introductory review of Alpine Linux 2.0, the latest stable version, which was released last week."
This article presents a detailed, introductory review of Alpine Linux 2.0, the latest stable version, which was released last week."
Submission + - AMD Announces 8-Core Bulldozer CPU (stock.ly)
tonybubbles writes: You can't say that AMD is ever boring. The company says its next-generation Bulldozer CPU core will take a unique approach to computing that goes beyond Hyper-Threading, which some believe could offer phenomenal performance.Bulldozer makes a fairly big break from how today's multicores are
Comment Developing versus Hacking (Score 1) 220
By "hacking" I mean "slamming out some quick-and-dirty program." I can see the 500 replies to this decrying my misuse of the word Hacking comnig. In anticipation of that, consider that the word can be used in many ways to convey nuances of meaning, and I think this works. Moving on...
Everyone I know still doing Perl (including me sometimes) is working in the systems space. Service management, system monitoring and management... Perl is just a better shell scripting language in this context.
I don't know anyone doing application development in perl anymore. My friends and peers who used to walk on water with their god-like perl skills have all moved on to Python and Ruby, and I'm heading that way myself now. One friend remarked to me "I wish I'd switched from Python to Perl sooner. Ten years of Perl man
Um.... well, that's clearly what Perl 6 became. But I remember when Perl 6 was announced - it was not framed as "I'm going to do a research project while other people take care of the production perl." That's what effectively happened, but that's not really what was planned based on my recollection of OSCON talks and previous slashdot articles.
Anyway... while Perl can do almost anything, I think other languages do a lot of those things more cleanly, and in a manner more conducive to writing code that doesn't suck to maintain. That said, I look forward to Perl 6 finally being "mostly done" so it can truly be assessed on its own merits, not its lamentable history.
And why do people like to hate on Perl 6? In my opinion its simple - missed commitments on schedule. Lots of them.
Comment We're not retreating.... (Score 4, Interesting) 432
We're rapidly advancing in a different direction.
The pros and cons on both sides of this debate are compelling. Blizzard's time, money, and "quality of product (the forums)" versus people's privacy.
Not sure why it had to be "either/or". I think they should have rolled out Real-ID-only forums in parallel and let people choose for themselves.
In the end I think Blizzard waited too long. "Serious" WoW-related discourse doesn't happen on Blizzard's forums anymore. Most serious players know to start at elitistjerks.com. Not that their forums are perfect, but if I want good info on class mechanics, gear, talents, rotations... that's where I go.
Comment Re:trying to imagine... (Score 1) 833
Nope. I've already been silenced by the stupidity and spam. I wrote off the forums years ago.
Believing You Are Very Good Or Evil Boosts Your Physical Capabilities 192
Research by Kurt Gray, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard, shows that a person's capacity for willpower and physical endurance increases if they perceive themselves as good or evil. "Evil" acts in particular give a person a large boost in physical strength. From the article: “'People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, more willpower, and less sensitivity to discomfort,' Gray said. 'By perceiving themselves as good or evil, people embody these perceptions, actually becoming more capable of physical endurance.' Gray’s findings run counter to the notion that only those blessed with heightened willpower or self-control are capable of heroism, suggesting instead that simply attempting heroic deeds can confer personal power."
Porting Lemmings In 36 Hours 154
An anonymous reader writes "Aaron Ardiri challenged himself to port his classic PalmOS version of Lemmings to the iPhone, Palm Pre, Mac, and Windows. The porting was done using his own dev environment, which creates native C versions of the game. He liveblogged the whole thing, and finished after only 36 hours with an iPhone version and a Palm Pre version awaiting submission, and free versions for Windows and Mac available on his site."
Submission + - The HTTPS Everywhere Firefox Extension (eff.org)
Peter Eckersley writes: EFF and Tor have announced a public beta of HTTPS Everywhere, a Firefox plugin that automatically encrypts your Google searches as well as requests to several other sites, including Wikipedia, Twitter, Identica, Facebook, some major newspapers, and a number of smaller search engines. This plugin makes it much easier to use encryption with sites that support it, but not by default.
For us, this is part of an ongoing campaign to turn the unencrypted web of the past into the encrypted web of tomorrow.
For us, this is part of an ongoing campaign to turn the unencrypted web of the past into the encrypted web of tomorrow.
