Comment Re:An interesting followup... (Score 1) 325
Ah... Used to be sCary's Shugashack. Back when there were mods to make games less pretty (no textures packs)...
Comment Re:Never mind the sourcecode (Score 1) 325
and the comments are strangely not off topic...
Modded Xbox Bans Prompt EFF Warning About Terms of Service 254
Last month we discussed news that Microsoft had banned hundreds of thousands of Xbox users for using modified consoles. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has now pointed to this round of bans as a prime example of the power given to providers of online services through 'Terms of Service' and other usage agreements.
"No matter how much we rely on them to get on with our everyday lives, access to online services — like email, social networking sites, and (wait for it) online gaming — can never be guaranteed. ... he who writes the TOS makes the rules, and when it comes to enforcing them, the service provider often behaves as though it is also the judge, jury and executioner. ... While the mass ban provides a useful illustration of their danger, these terms can be found in nearly all TOS agreements for all kinds of services. There have been virtually no legal challenges to these kinds of arbitrary termination clauses, but we imagine this will be a growth area for lawyers."
Games Workshop Goes After Fan Site 174
mark.leaman writes "BoingBoing has a recent post regarding Games Workshop's aggressive posturing against fan sites featuring derivative work of their game products. 'Game publisher and miniature manufacturer Games Workshop just sent a cease and desist letter to boardgamegeek.com, telling them to remove all fan-made players' aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games...' As a lifelong hobby gamer of table, board, card and miniature games, I view this as pure heresy. It made me reject the idea of buying any Games Workshop (read Warhammer) products for my son this Christmas. Their fate was sealed, in terms of my wallet, after I Googled their shenanigans. In 2007 they forbid Warhammer fan films, this year they shut down Vassal Modules, and a while back they went after retailers as well. What ever happened to fair use?"
Comment Re:I work in he rental industry (Score 1) 685
Normal Viewing Distance is really the essential part.
To fully notice the detail 1080p you need to sit approx 7 feet away from a 50 inch TV.
If you bought one of those 32inch TVs... Try 4 feet away. You'll only start to the benefits of 720p at 9 feet.
If you watch your TV from across a decent sized room, you need an exceptionally large screen to really soak in the benefits.
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/
Broke Counties Turn Failing Roads To Gravel
717
To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.
Rock Band Licenses The Beatles 266
eldavojohn writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that MTV's Rock Band has gained the licenses to an undetermined number of songs. Details are scant, but it would be nice to see a whole game based on just the evolution of The Beatles' music. According to Reuters, this has been in the works for months. Hopefully I can finally hide my strained vocals to so many beautiful songs within the privacy of my home instead of drunk off my ass at a bar."
Researchers To Build Underwater Airplane 263
coondoggie writes to tell us that DARPA seems to still be having fun with their funding and continues to aim for the "far out." The latest program, a submersible airplane, seems to have been pulled directly from science fiction. Hopefully this voyage to the bottom of the sea is of the non-permanent variety. "According to DARPA: 'The difficulty with developing such a craft come from the diametrically opposed requirements that exist for an airplane and a submarine. While the primary goal for airplane designers is to try and minimize weight, a submarine must be extremely heavy in order to submerge underwater. In addition, the flow conditions and the systems designed to control a submarine and an airplane are radically different, due to the order of magnitude difference in the densities of air and water.'"
Comment Re:Exactly Who Watches Over the Air TV Anyways? (Score 1) 352
I'm really glad everyone you know has cable... that clearly makes it the situation everywhere. Try living in a town of less 10,000 people and you won't find cable companies. There are people who also don't want to pay to watch what is freely sent out over the air
Submission + - FreedroidRPG 0.10.2 release 1
Arthur Huillet writes: "Hello,
version 0.10.2 of FreedroidRPG was just released.
FreedroidRPG is an isometric 3D role playing game inspired from Diablo and Fallout.
(http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/info.php)
This new version, mostly unchanged from the -rc4, focuses on making the development for the
game easier, exported some hardcoded data into files, made the map
editor a bit more usable and other major and minor tweaks.
The source code and a win32 binary package are available at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=54521&package_id=58238&release_id=517900
That all being said, here is what we expect to deliver in the next version of FreedroidRPG:
- Magic is going to make a comeback, after a total redesign aimed at making it more original and
funnier
- New maps
- More dialog translations
- Small improvements on the interface
Updates will be announced on our website at http://www.freedroid.org/.
Contributors for dialog translations, mapping and sound effects are welcome. We are also looking
for testers, especially for platforms such as Mac OS, Linux/PPC, *BSD, etc.
You can contact us on #freedroid on irc.freenode.net, or by mail to freedroid-discussion AT
lists.sourceforge.net."
version 0.10.2 of FreedroidRPG was just released.
FreedroidRPG is an isometric 3D role playing game inspired from Diablo and Fallout.
(http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/info.php)
This new version, mostly unchanged from the -rc4, focuses on making the development for the
game easier, exported some hardcoded data into files, made the map
editor a bit more usable and other major and minor tweaks.
The source code and a win32 binary package are available at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
That all being said, here is what we expect to deliver in the next version of FreedroidRPG:
- Magic is going to make a comeback, after a total redesign aimed at making it more original and
funnier
- New maps
- More dialog translations
- Small improvements on the interface
Updates will be announced on our website at http://www.freedroid.org/.
Contributors for dialog translations, mapping and sound effects are welcome. We are also looking
for testers, especially for platforms such as Mac OS, Linux/PPC, *BSD, etc.
You can contact us on #freedroid on irc.freenode.net, or by mail to freedroid-discussion AT
lists.sourceforge.net."
Submission + - Why do people tolerate false advertising? (slashdot.org)
DA-MAN writes: "Why is it that we, in the US, tolerate deliberate false advertising? ISP's advertise unlimited use or don't advertise limits, yet they get away with it. Mobile carriers claim to give unlimited mobile to mobile, never stating that they really mean mobile to mobile within the same network. Why is it that we allow companies to redefine "unlimited" and so forth?"
Submission + - Perpetual Motion machine hits "technical snag& (vnunet.com)
whoever57 writes: The demonstration of Steorn's perpetual motion machine ("Orba")
appears to have hit "technical difficulties". Most people might call this "difficulty" the law of conservation of energy, but the Irish company claims that the problem may be related to the heat from the camera lighting on the display.
Submission + - Making the sky searchable
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Computer scientists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have teamed up with astronomers at New York University on an ambitious project. You can send them a picture of the sky above your head and their special software will identify the stars that are in the image. In other words, their computer program will make night sky searchable. The team is organizing and mixing images coming from astronomical databases with images coming from 'all kinds of cameras, amateur telescopes, large ground-based telescopes, and space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope.' This specialized search engine is still in beta-version, but is available to both professional and amateur astronomers. Read more for additional details and pictures of the Lagoon Nebula before and after processing."
Submission + - Wii Opera SDK Detects Motion on All 4 Wii Remotes (hullbreachonline.com)
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Wii Opera SDK at HullBreachOnline.com has just been updated in the past week to make use of the opera.wiiremote class of the
Wii's Internet Channel, unlocking Z roll and positioning information from all four Wii Remotes for developers of JavaScript-based games and applications. This augments existing SDK classes for button detection and SuperFX Chip like 3D graphics. Previously the WiiCade API was the only big player, but it seems to have some competition now..."
Would You Install Pirated Software at Work? 848
An anonymous reader asks: "I am an IT professional, and due to budget constraints, I have been told to install multiple copies of MS Office, despite offering to install OpenOffice, and other OpenSource Office products. Even though most of the uses are for people using Excel like a database, or formatting of text in cells, other programs are not tolerated. I have been over ruled by our controller, to my disagreement. I would never turn them in, but I am in tough place by knowing doing something illegal. I want to keep my job, but disagree with some of the decision making on this issue. Other than drafting a letter to the owners of the company on how I disagree with the policy, what else can I do?"
