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Comment Re:PS3 (Score 1) 142

by KodaK (#25293903) Attached to: Working Calculator Created in <em>LittleBigPlanet</em>

Just an FYI: I bought the MGS4 bundle because I wanted backwards compatibility (my daughter has taken over my old PS/2) and I have yet to make it through MGS4. I'm told fans of the series absolutely love it, but so far it's been incredibly boring with long, drawn out (mostly skip-able, thankfully) cut scenes that make absolutely no sense. Whoever did them has absolutely no sense of pacing, and a cut scene that should be a minute or two is drawn out into 20 minutes with lots of unnecessary pauses in the dialog. It's pretty bad, IMO.

Otherwise, I'm loving the PS3 so far. I'm in on the LBP beta and it's a shitload of fun.
Programming

Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? 836

Posted by kdawson from the change-of-atmosphere dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am a American citizen with a masters in Computer Science from a 3rd tier college and 4 years of work experience under my belt. I would like to work somewhere abroad in Europe for a couple years before I get too settled in life but have no clue where to start. I only speak English but would love to learn a second language. What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad? What countries offer the best opportunity to balance a challenging work environment with enough vacation to explore the rest of Europe in my free time? Any hassles I should know about?"
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail Screenshot-sm 354

Posted by samzenpus from the teach-me-something dept.
There is an old Japanese proverb that goes, "Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher." This week's mail is all about teaching. Whether it is about the seriousness of psychic ability, a short history of trolls or explaining how much free time and malice your dad's attorney has, these people just want to impart information. If what they sent me is any indication, they had a lot of sick days. Click on the link below to become enlightened.
Communications

Submission + - Fonality forks freepbx for branding purposes (trixbox.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: fonality (the company that took asterisk@home and made it TrixBox) forked freepbx so they don't have to use the freepbx logos in their product anymore. this isnt the 1st time theyve done something like this they turned asterisk@home (a free project) and turned it into TrixBox, which is now a commercial product

PC Gaming Suggestions for Console-like Fun? 513

Posted by timothy from the twister-seems-more-fun dept.
jayminer writes "We are a relatively newly married young couple who enjoy spending our spare time at home. We don't own a console but have a gaming laptop with DVI output to play games on our TV. My wife is also a CS major so she's computer literate enough. She does not like strategy games, MMORG or any other role-playing game. Apart from "Find the Sausage" jokes, we need quality gaming advice, preferably games which we can play with a single laptop connected to a single large screen, with two gamepads, a console-like experience. What are your suggestions?"
Cellphones

Apple Targeting Business World for the iPhone 338

Posted by Soulskill from the we-will-add-your-technological-distinctiveness-to-our-own dept.
The New York Times is running a couple of stories about the future of the iPhone in the business world and Apple's plan to maintain control of application development. Now that the iPhone SDK has been released and the "App store" has been demonstrated, Steve Jobs is pushing for the adoption of the iPhone as a standard business tool. In addition, a venture capitalist named John Doerr has launched a $100 million "iFund" to spur development of applications for the iPhone. From the NYTimes: "Mr. Jobs was upfront that there are limitations on what applications can do. He talked about bans on pornography and malicious programs. He also said Apple will not allow any application to be installed on the machine other than through the iTunes store. Nor will applications be permitted that enable an end run around Apple's deals with wireless carriers. Many questions remain unanswered. How much streaming video will Apple allow, because the iPhone is such an interesting video device? Mr. Jobs did say that the application development environment will have a lot of capabilities for video playback. Will Apple allow a service like Last.FM to offer streaming music on the iPhone?"
Networking

Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing? 287

Posted by kdawson from the tuning-for-the-benchmark dept.
dynamo52 writes "I'm a freelance network admin serving mainly small business clients. Over the last few months, I have noticed that any time I run any type of bandwidth testing for clients with Comcast accounts, the results have been amazingly fast — with some connections, Speakeasy will report up to 15 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up. Of course, clients get nowhere near this performance in everyday usage. (This can be quite annoying when trying to determine whether a client needs to switch over to a T1 or if their current ISP will suffice.) Upon further investigation, it appears that Comcast is delivering this bandwidth only for a few seconds after any new request and it is immediately throttled down. Doing a download and upload test using a significantly large file (100+ MB) yields results more in line with everyday usage experience, usually about 1.2 Mbps down and about 250 Kbps up (but it varies). Is there any valid reason why Comcast would front-load transfers in this way, or is it merely an effort to prevent end-users from being able to assess their bandwidth accurately? Does anybody know of other ISPs using similar practices?"
The Internet

"Anonymous" Takes Scientology Protest to the Streets 740

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the watch-out-for-the-hit-squads dept.
This past Sunday members of the group "Anonymous" that has been running an attack on the church of Scientology took their battle from the tubes of the internet to the pavement of real life, staging a protest outside the central Phoenix Church of Scientology. "The protesters said they gathered Sunday in lieu of the birthday of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist once cared for by church staffers. Her 1995 death sparked media attention and a civil wrongful death suit against a branch of the Church of Scientology. A wrongful death suit by her family was a public-relations nightmare for the church for years until it was settled in 2004. The Church of Scientology declined to comment on the Phoenix protests. It did provide a news release calling members of Anonymous cyber-terrorists."
United States

Science Debate 2008 322

Posted by kdawson from the good-luck-with-that dept.
bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting about Science Debate 2008, an attempt to put the scientific issues front and center in the US Presidential race. After 12,000 scientists signed on in support of the idea of a debate focused on science, no campaign has replied to an invitation to such a debate. The article notes that only one candidate has said much about science issues in the campaign, and that some who are running are sufficiently anti-science as to deny evolution. There is a link to a comparison of the candidates' positions on issues informed by science. (Yes, Ron Paul is included.)"
Privacy

The Doctor Will See Your Credit Score Now 464

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what's-up-doc dept.
mytrip writes to mention that the same people who invented credit scores are working to create a similar system for hospitals and other health care providers. "The project, dubbed "MedFICO" in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient's ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive."
Social Networks

Parents To Block Kids From Joining MySpace 337

Posted by kdawson from the how-hard-is-a-new-gmail-address dept.
Reservoir Hill writes "A New York Times blog notes that attorneys general of 49 states are announcing a partnership with MySpace to fight sexual predators on social networks by letting parents submit the e-mail addresses of their children, so the company can prevent anyone from using that address to set up a profile. MySpace will also set up a 'closed' section for users under age 18 so only their established online friends can visit their pages. MySpace also promises to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site. 'This set of principles is a landmark and milestone because it involves an acknowledgment of the importance of age and identity authentication,' said Connecticut attorney General Richard Blumenthal." Blumenthal also actually said "If we can put a man on the moon..."
The Internet

NSI Registers Every Domain Checked 668

Posted by kdawson from the that's-why-they-are-the-front-runner dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a developing story, registrar Network Solutions has been caught front-running domain names. Any domain names searched via NSI's whois are being immediately purchased by the registrar, thereby preventing a registrant from purchasing the domain at any other registrar. There are multiple reports of this practice over at DomainState.com." Update: 01/09 01:58 GMT by KD : shashib writes to let us know that NSI has issued a response to the accusations of front running.
Government

UK Moves to Outlaw 'Hacker Tools' 308

Posted by Zonk from the getting-to-be-popular-over-there dept.
twitter writes "New guidance rules for the UK's controversial Computer Misuse Act do not allay fears of impracticality, or of the banning of legitimate IT software: 'The government has come through with guidelines that address some, but not all, of these concerns about dual-use tools. The guidelines establish that to successfully prosecute the author of a tool it needs to be shown that they intended it to be used to commit computer crime. But the Home Office, despite lobbying, refused to withdraw the distribution offense. This leaves the door open to prosecute people who distribute a tool, such as nmap, that's subsequently abused by hackers.'" Somewhat similar legislation recently became law in Germany.
Programming

Rails Bigwig Rails on Rails Community 616

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the less-than-elegant-exit-strategies dept.
Zed Shaw, creator of the popular Mongrel HTTP daemon / library, has decided it was high time to tear into the Ruby/Rails community for many different complaints that he has been collecting over the last few years. "Rails is a Ghetto" is Shaw's self-proclaimed exit strategy from the Rails community. "This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a 'Ruby guy' anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned. This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well."
The Internet

People Were More Likely To Google Themselves This Year 160

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-up-with-the-joneses dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "More than twice as many Americans googled themselves in 2006 than five years previous — and many are googling their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released ecently by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey shows that the percentage of US adult Internet users who have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine has more than doubled in the past five years (pdf) from 22 percent in August, 2001 to 47 percent in December, 2006. Only 3 percent of internet self-googlers say they Google themselves regularly, 22 percent say 'every once in a while,' and three-quarters say they have googled themselves once or twice. The original report, 'Digital Footprints,' contains many more interesting observations (pdf)."

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