MonMotha - Slashdot User

Submission + - Japan to Fingerprint, Photograph all Foreigners (theage.com.au)

Submitted by

MochaMan

on Saturday November 17, 2007 @10:57AM

MochaMan writes: "As of this Tuesday, November 20th, Japan will be requiring mandatory fingerprinting and mug shots of all foreigners entering the country, making it one of only two countries in the world to do so. The program goes further than the US program in that it also applies to visa-holders and permanent residents. The prints will be stored and shared with other governments. The Japanese government has produced an explanatory video, and even a promotional PDF poster. Japanese and international civil rights groups have raised concerns that the practice is both an invasion of privacy and discriminatory. An online petition to abolish the program is available. Is the age of privacy over?"

Futurama Movie Set For November 27 308

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @02:15AM from the on-a-bender dept.

kevin_conaway writes "TV Squad informs us that the new Futurama movie will be available on November 27. The show will return as a full-length, high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes, each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes."

Submission + - UT3 on Linux or Mac Anyone?

Submitted by Space-Nut on Monday July 30, 2007 @10:43PM

Space-Nut writes: It is well known that the Unreal Tournament series have tried hard in the past to make their games available for Linux and Macs. With the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 release sometime soon and a statement back in May from Mark Rein in thread about DX10"..All this means is that UT3 will support DX10 — it does NOT mean that DX10 is required! We expect the vast majority of our users will be Windows XP / DX9 users. We will also support Mac and Linux as per usual." Is anyone else really excited about UT3 and 2007 and will you support Epic in providing a Linux and Mac version by buying the game?

Comment Re:This is a gaming enthusiast's dream... (Score 4, Informative) 76

by MonMotha on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @04:58PM (#18611705) Attached to: Rock Band As the Costly New MTV?

It's not unheard of in the world of Music games at all, which may explain why the genre has trouble with the US market. If you're familiar with Konami's Bemani series (which, I might add, has much of this functionality since Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania can be linked, and are in fact on the same disc when sold for the home market), expensive controllers are the way things work. A beatmania controller is about 7000Yen (~$70US) in Japan, and pop'n mini controllers are comparable. If you want *good* (so-called "Arcade Style"), full arcade size controllers, you can expect to drop upwards of $300 on a single controller for these games. A good controller for Drum Mania (a MIDI drum set) can cost over $1000! Even a cheap-o DDR pad will run you $25 here in the US. A good one is usually in the $75-120 range for foam insert based ones, and $200+ for a sturdy metal one.

The Japanese are more gadget oriented than USians, though, and this may explain at least some of the success of the series in the Japanese market as compared with its difficulty here in the USA.

Submission + - RIAA sues paralyzed stroke victim

Submitted by

Waylon

on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @10:51PM

Waylon writes: "It seems the RIAA will sue anyone, anywhere, even if you're a paralyzed stroke victim. Yes, Warner Music and the RIAA are suing a retired railroad man in Florida whose left side has been paralyzed by a stroke and whose sole source of income is his disability check. From the article: "Although the defendant John Paladuk, an employee of C&N Railroad for 36 years, was living in Florida at the time of the alleged copyright suit, and had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement, and despite that the fact that Mr. Paladuk suffered a stroke last year which resulted in complete paralysis of his entire left side and severely impaired speech, rendering him disabled, and despite the fact that his disability check is his sole source of income, the RIAA commenced suit against him on February 27, 2007.""

Submission + - Linux Kernel Devs Offer Free Driver Development

Submitted by schwaang on Monday January 29, 2007 @11:09PM

schwaang writes: Linux Kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman, author of Linux Kernel in a Nutshell has posted an epic announcement on his blog:

"the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. [...] All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while."

"If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device's specifications, we have arranged a program [...] in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled."

"Now your developers will have more time to work on drivers for all of the other operating systems out there, and you can add "supported on Linux" to your product's marketing material."

This could portend increased device compatibility for Linux users, higher-quality drivers, and fewer non-free binary blobs.

P.S. nvidia this means you!

Submission + - Hosting Provider Builds Own Power Substation

Submitted by

1sockchuck

on Monday January 29, 2007 @06:26PM

1sockchuck writes: "With data centers using more and more power, Sacramento managed hosting provider RagingWire wanted to ensure that its customers wouldn't run out of juice. So the company built its own 69kV power substation on its property, which will supply its data center with up to 46 megawatts — enough to power about 25,000 single-family homes. Concerns about the availability of electricity for data center prompted a Silicon Valley "power summit" last month. Is this a sign of things to come?"

Submission + - Windows XP Activation in the Future?

Submitted by bigredswitch on Monday January 29, 2007 @01:05PM

bigredswitch writes: Now we're on the verge of Vista being released, how are we going to activate XP when Microsoft drop support, either when performing a reinstall or resurrecting old hardware? It's not going to be a problem now or for the next few years, sure, but what's the future going to be like (flying cars aside)? Getting an older machine back into action to pull files off, run machine automation, etc., is easy with Win2k and everything that went before (I've worked at places running Gem on 286s still for in-house stuff) but is this at an end with XP and onwards? How are other people looking to handle this?

Submission + - A Blogger gets an "Un-Cease and disist" no

Submitted by AlphaLop on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @09:24PM

AlphaLop writes: A blogger who wrote a somewhat Derogatory article about the online "Game" Second Life and created a link on his blog inviting lawsuits got an unexpected response from Linden Lab...

Too bad the RIAA and MPAA don't think this way.... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070124/ap_on_hi_te/se cond_life_parody Sorry for not embedding the link but I don't know HTML yet.

Submission + - What are these 360 ports for?

Submitted by

jwigum

on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @07:55PM

jwigum writes: "So I got to wondering: What are those two ports on the bottom of a 360 controller used for? The ports in question(second photobucket file here in case the first dies) obviously have contacts. The thing that puzzles me is that the only peripheral I know of that uses these ports is the stock 360 headset. I've included that in the same picture, but flipped upside down so that the area that would be in contact with the... contacts is visible. As you can see, there aren't any contacts there. I can only assume they're for a peripheral that is either unreleased, or abandoned(stereo sound headphones for split screen?).

So Slashdot: What are these ports for?"

Submission + - Time for a different terminal emulator?

Submitted by

swankjesse

on Monday January 15, 2007 @11:37PM

swankjesse writes: "I spend a lot of time at the command line, so a good terminal emulator is important to me. Unfortunately, the default ones all have some annoyances:
Konsole inserts extra newline characters in the output, which makes it labour-intensive to do cut-and-paste.
Gnome Terminal doesn't let me scroll back while output is being generated.
Terminal.app doesn't have tabs, so I'm constantly having to search for my window. And it's Mac-only.

So I started searching for a better terminal emulator. The most interesting thus far is Terminator. It's got horizontal scrolling, which is ideal for SQL. And it gets the details right: scrollback, wrapping, fonts and keyboard shortcuts Just Work.

What's terminal emulator do you use? What does it do better?"

Submission + - Sega to stop GD-ROM production

Submitted by Joan Cross on Monday January 15, 2007 @08:14PM

Joan Cross writes: Sega of Japan plans to discontinue production of GD-ROM media in February, 2007. This media is used almost exclusively by the Sega Dreamcast home console, and the NAOMI arcade system. By stopping production, future official games (licensed by Sega) on the Dreamcast or NAOMI will not be possible. The Dreamcast Community are asking all fans past and present to help keep alive the Dream.

Submission + - PCI SIG releases PCIe 2.0

Submitted by

symbolset

on Monday January 15, 2007 @05:46PM

symbolset writes: "According to The Register PCI SIG has released version 2.0 of the PCI Express base specification.
The new released doubles the signalling rate from 2.5Gbps to 5Gbps. The upshot: a x16 connector can transfer data at up to around 16GBps.
The PCI-SIG release is here. The electromechanical specification is also due to be released shortly:
The companion PCI Express Card Electromechanical 2.0 specification is currently at revision 0.9, having completed its 60-day member review. The PCI-SIG anticipates that this specification too will be released in the near future.
"

Submission + - Water contest for a Wii kills

Submitted by priestx on Sunday January 14, 2007 @06:16PM

priestx writes: A Californian woman who took part in a water-drinking contest to win a video game system has died of water intoxication, tests have shown. Jennifer Strange had taken part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" game run by KDND 107.9 radio in Sacramento, which promised the winner a Nintendo Wii. A work colleague said Ms Strange had reported her head was hurting hours after the contest and was going home.

Submission + - The RIAA's worst nightmare or just some wannabes?

Submitted by nagora on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:35PM

nagora writes: The BBC is reporting that next week's UK music chart may have the first sign of the end of the recording industry as we know it. From this week (7th Jan, 2006), all downloaded music sales are counted in the official UK chart, not just tracks which have had a physical media release. Now, a group of unsigned kids is poised to enter the top 40 without any old-world recording, distribution, or production deals. Koopa have their own web site, and of course their own My Space home.

But they're not acting on principle; band member Joe Murphy says "If someone comes along and gives us an offer, we'll talk to them." before continuing on to add the words the recording industry has been having nightmares about since the introduction of the mp3 format: "If we can get enough exposure and get in the top 40 by the end of the week, do we necessarily need a large label? Probably nowadays, no you don't." Is this finally the crack in the dam we've all been waiting for to wash away the entrenched monopolies of 20th century music production? Or just a sell-out waiting to happen?

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