Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Cellphones

Video Game Consoles Are 'Fundamentally Doomed,' Says Lord British 374

Posted by Soulskill from the depends-on-your-timescale dept.
zacharye writes "Microsoft sold nearly one million Xbox 360s last week alone, but we're nearing the end of the road for video game consoles according to one industry visionary. Richard Garriott, known for having created the fantasy role-playing franchise Ultima, says converged devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets will soon render dedicated game consoles obsolete: '... the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we've thought of as a console.'"

Comment Re:How long till they can print money? (Score 1) 212

by Gori (#37465124) Attached to: Gang Used 3D Printers To Make ATM Skimmers

You are forgetting the basic laws of conservation of energy and mass. There is a reason by replicators are a science fiction tech.

Creating mass out of energy/electricity would require m/(c^2) Joules or energy. With the current speed of light and price of electricity, I would hate to see the power bill for replicating a glass of water.

Even if you are not creating stuff out of energy, but just printing it from some base material, that base stuff needs to be produced, with the relevant chemical/material properties. That is not exactly for free either.

So don't worry, the traditional economy isn't going anywhere just yet.
Security

Testing Free English Anti-Malware On Non-English Threats 78

Posted by Soulskill from the may-you-direction-me-to-the-ham dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Brazilian technology news site O Globo posted an interesting comparison on how free anti-malware behaves against non-English threats (Google translation of Portuguese original). By using a database of over 3000 samples from Brazil's Security Incident Contact Center, the numbers are quite different from all US anti-malware reviews. While Avira achieved the best score, 78%, Microsoft Security Essentials stopped less than 14%. This can be a headache for some large multinational corporations, whose IT departments deploy US anti-malware on the entire network, but have network segments outside US with many 'unknown' threats roaming around. I wonder what the results would be in other countries."

Submission + - Assange removed from Time Person Of The Year poll (tprone.com)

Submitted by DavoMan
DavoMan writes: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been removed from the poll for TIME Person Of The Year 2010. You can see quite clearly on trprone.com's website that they contacted TIME about this, and TIME stated assange was on the list, with several thousand points. However if you visit the list of candidates, you'll find 200 people, none of them are Assange. The list is not a 'top 200' as the points clearly go down to a few hundred. Al Jazeera also has the story at http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/201012169312449462.html

Comment Re:Translation (Score 1) 507

by Gori (#34559222) Attached to: Annual power consumption at your residence?

But that is only true if you assume 100% conversion of gas to electricity which is obviously not correct. A really high end gas powered power plant may convert 40 % of that into electricity. Which, transported and used for heating even further reduces the efficiency. So lets say, overall, this gas I used corresponds to 3000 kWh of actual electricity. I am still under the apartment category :(

Comment Re:Translation (Score 1) 507

by Gori (#34484708) Attached to: Annual power consumption at your residence?

- 2500-5000 kWh I live in an apartment

wow, you americans...

Those ranges are a scary. As a family of 4, in a semi detached house in north-western europe we use 3000 kWh of electricity and 1000 m3 of gas a year! According to your numbers I would use more than 3 times more if I was in the US.

No wonder that people say that if the whole world would like like Americans,we would need two to three planets to support us...
Wii

Submission + - Johnny Chung Lee's Wii Smartboard (toysgadget.com)

Submitted by Nerdfest
Nerdfest writes: In these budget conscious times, schools who want to integrate modern interactive technologies have a choice, buy a SmartBoard , or build your own for a fraction of the cost. Johnny Chung Lee has done some of the groundbreaking work with the Wii, the build instructions and downloads can be found on his site. In addition to the Wiimote, you'll need an infrared light emitting pen, which you can build yourself for short money.

Comment How about non Floating Point performance ? (Score 4, Insightful) 260

by Gori (#29881605) Attached to: Asus Releases Desktop-Sized Supercomputer

San somebody who has actually worked with such machines enlighten me about its performance on tasks that are not floating point intensive? Our simulations mainly push many,many objects around, with relatively little, or no floating point math in them.

Do such machines still make sense, or are we better off with a bunch of general purpose CPUs clustered together? How do they compare to Suns Niagara cpus that have umpteen hardware threads in them ?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra

Close