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PC Games (Games)

Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships 227

Posted by Soulskill from the klingons-off-the-starboard-bow dept.
jones_supa writes: The next game from the mind of veteran strategy and simulation game designer Sid Meier has been revealed. 2K and Firaxis Games have announced Sid Meier's Starships, a turn-based interstellar strategy game scheduled to arrive in early 2015 for Windows, OS X, and iOS (iPad). In the game, you control a fleet of starships as you journey through the galaxy to complete missions, protect planets and their inhabitants, and build a planetary federation. As you trek through the stars, you will be challenged to expand your federation's influence and reach. You shall also amass futuristic technology and take part in combat using a deep roster of customizable ships. When designing Starships, Meier was intrigued by the idea of exploring the next chapter in the story of Civilization: Beyond Earth. "What happens after we colonize our new home and eventually build starships to take to the stars? What has become of our long-lost brothers and sisters from the planet Earth," Meier asks. "My goal was to create an experience that focuses on starship design and combat within a universe filled with interstellar adventure, diplomacy, and exploration."
The Internet

Republican Bill Aims To Thwart the FCC's Leaning Towards Title II 182

Posted by timothy from the belief-in-authority dept.
SpzToid writes U.S. congressional Republicans on Friday proposed legislation that would set "net neutrality" rules for broadband providers, aiming to head off tougher regulations backed by the Obama administration. Republican lawmakers hope to counter the Federal Communications Commission's vote on Feb. 26 for rules that are expected to follow the legal path endorsed by President Barack Obama, which Internet service providers (ISPs) and Republicans say would unnecessarily burden the industry with regulation. Net neutrality activists, now with Obama's backing, have advocated for regulation of ISPs under a section of communications law known as Title II, which would treat them more like public utilities. The White House on Thursday said legislation was not necessary to settle so-called "net neutrality" rules because the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to write them.
Businesses

Study: Belief That Some Fields Require "Brilliance" May Keep Women Out 218

Posted by samzenpus from the you-can-go-it dept.
sciencehabit writes Certain scientific fields require a special type of brilliance, according to conventional wisdom. And a new study suggests that this belief, as misguided as it may be, helps explain the underrepresentation of women in those fields. The authors found that fields in which inborn ability is prized over hard work produced relatively fewer female Ph.D.s. This trend, based on 2011 data from the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, also helps explain why gender ratios don't follow the simplified STEM/non-STEM divide in some fields, including philosophy and biology, they conclude.
Security

NSA Official: Supporting Backdoored Random Number Generator Was "Regrettable" 106

Posted by samzenpus from the if-we-had-to-do-it-over-again dept.
Trailrunner7 writes In a new article in an academic math journal, the NSA's director of research says that the agency's decision not to withdraw its support of the Dual EC_DRBG random number generator after security researchers found weaknesses in it and questioned its provenance was a "regrettable" choice. Michael Wertheimer, the director of researcher at the National Security Agency, wrote in a short piece in Notices, a publication of the American Mathematical Society, that even during the standards development process for Dual EC many years ago, members of the working group focused on the algorithm raised concerns that it could have a backdoor in it. The algorithm was developed in part by the NSA and cryptographers were suspect of it from the beginning. "With hindsight, NSA should have ceased supporting the dual EC_DRBG algorithm immediately after security researchers discovered the potential for a trapdoor. In truth, I can think of no better way to describe our failure to drop support for the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm as anything other than regrettable," Wertheimer wrote in a piece in Notices' February issue.

Comment GUI Datasets (Score 3, Informative) 264

by StormReaver (#48804965) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Linux Database GUI Application Development?

Having programmed in GTK+, Qt, Java, and C#: I find C# to be the most painful for database interactivity. Its data bound controls (to me) are infuriatingly convoluted, complex, inefficient, and inflexible.

I find it far, far easier to use a tool that generates database models, create readers and writers based on those models to abstract them away from the application, and then use those readers/writers in the mainline application. The payoff is immense.

The closest fit for you is Java (since C# started life as Microsoft's attempt to make a Windows-specific version of Java). The two best IDE choices then become Netbeans and IntelliJ (do yourself a favor, and skip Eclipse).

Comment Re:But (Score 4, Funny) 640

by StormReaver (#48803603) Attached to: Microsoft Ends Mainstream Support For Windows 7

If Bill Gates cured cancer tomorrow and gave the cure away for free, posters would be on here in droves complaining that he didn't do it fast enough.

If Bill Gates cured cancer and gave the cure away for free:

1) The first cure would be free.

2) The cure would be designed to reactivate the cancer, this time being more virulent than the original, but this time it would be immune to the free cure.

3) The second cure would require activation and frequent repurchases, or the cure would be rendered inert (killing you). You would be required to repurchase the cure for the rest of your life.

4) You would be required to purchase cures for diseases you don't have, but taxing your indocrine system to the point that random body parts start failing.

5) Bill Gates would issue patches for the flawed cure, but the patches would inexplicable cause new diseases for which you would be required to purchase 3rd party medicines. These medicines would themselves drain 60% of your body's useable energy, and unpredictable times, while unsuccessfully attempting to address the fundamental design flaws of the cure.

6) Bill Gates would promise that the next version of the cure will solve your problems, but that it is not covered by any licensing agreement you may currently have. The promise is false, but you don't seem to remember any of the other false promises he made, so you purchase the next version of the cure. This somehow makes things worse, but Bill Gates blames you for using 3rd party medicines.

I could go on, but I have work to do.
United States

Ted Cruz To Oversee NASA and US Science Programs 496

Posted by Soulskill from the pi-is-exactly-3 dept.
romanval sends word that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will become the new chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA and government scientific research. Cruz has both spoken in favor of NASA and attempted to cut its budget, but he's most notable for his opposition to the science supporting climate change. From the article: His vociferous opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and his support of extreme budget cuts could spell trouble for NASA's less prominent programs, such as its own climate research and sophisticated supercomputers. His role on the front lines of the 2013 government shutdown, which critics say had lasting negative effects on public safety, NASA research and EPA scientists' ability to visit contaminated sites, also suggests at best a narrow focus on NASA's largest projects and at worst a disregard for agencies that require science funding.
Crime

LAPD Orders Body Cams That Will Start Recording When Police Use Tasers 219

Posted by Soulskill from the looking-forward-to-all-the-youtube-clips dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Lily Hay Newman reports that the LAPD has ordered 3,000 Tasers which, when discharged, will automatically activate cameras on officers' uniforms, creating visual records of incidents at a time of mounting concern about excessive force by U.S. law enforcement officers. The new digital Taser X26P weapons record the date, time, and duration of firing, and whether Taser wires actually strike suspects and how long the thousands of volts of electricity pulse through them. "This technology gives a much better picture of what happens in the field," says Steve Tuttle.

The idea of using a Taser discharge as a criterion for activating body cams is promising, especially as more and more police departments adopt body cams and struggle to establish guidelines for when they should be on or off. Police leadership — i.e., chiefs and upper management — is far more supportive of the technology and tends to view body-worn cameras as a tool for increasing accountability and reducing civil liability. On the other hand, the patrol officer culture is concerned that the technology will be an unfair intrusion into their routine activities — for instance, it might invite over-managing minor policy violations. "In addition to these new Taser deployments, we plan to issue a body-worn camera and a Taser device to every officer," says Police Chief Charlie Beck. "It is our goal to make these important tools available to every front line officer over the next few years."

Comment Re:Lots of missing software ... (Score 1) 421

by StormReaver (#48734453) Attached to: What Isn't There an App For?

If you are looking for anything that is even moderately sophisticated, chances are that no one has made an app for it.

I agree. I wanted a somewhat sophisticated shopping app, so I browsed the Google store for one. There were a TON of shopping apps, but they were all very simplistic (but with good looking GUI's). These simplistic shopping apps (no more than two or three functions) were woefully inadequate for my needs. However, they had thousands (or hundreds of thousands) installs.

So I wrote one over the course of about two years. It allowed me to track my shopping at every store I patronized, automatically compare prices for items I bought at any of those stores, report on where my money went over any arbitrary period of time, etc. I was even ready to create an subsection to integrate the data into my financial database. It was so useful for my wife and me that I decided to sell it on Google Play.

Last I checked, it sold about four copies in about as many years. Granted, I was expecting low sales because my Android UI design skills were crude at best. But I was expecting to at least make some money from its sheer usefulness.

I concluded that very few people want to use their Android devices for anything but entertainment (even in their shopping apps). They will flock to the vapid but pretty apps, and ignore useful apps that don't have a flashy GUI. I started redesigning the UI to be more vapid-compliant, but then my first son was born. Maybe after my two boys are old enough to keep each other occupied, I'll get back to the redesign.
Sony

After Outage, Sony Makes Peace Offering To Users of PlayStation Network 95

Posted by samzenpus from the sorry-for-your-trouble dept.
An anonymous reader notes that Sony is offering deals to make up for the downtime over Christmas. "PlayStation Network gamers didn't have such a happy holiday thanks to the reported handiwork of some hackers, so Sony is hoping to appease users of its online gaming service with promises of deals and discounts. For Playstation Plus subscribers, Sony is offering a 5-day membership extension, and for all members, a 10 percent discount at the PlayStation store, according to a blog post published Thursday. The PlayStation Network is Sony's online service for its PlayStation game console. Both PSN and Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live, were intermittently offline beginning on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Xbox Live came back online first, with PSN following Saturday night."
United States

US Slaps Sanctions On North Korea After Sony Cyberattack 231

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-have-cuba's-old-digs dept.
wiredmikey writes: The United States imposed financial sanctions Friday on North Korea and several senior government officials in retaliation for a cyber attack on Sony Pictures. President Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of "the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies (PDF) of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014." The activities "constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States," he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders of his executive order. The new measures allow the Treasury Department "to apply sanctions against officials of the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, and persons determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of" these bodies.
Earth

Pope Francis To Issue Encyclical On Global Warming 341

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
HughPickens.com writes The Guardian reports that following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, Pope Francis plans to publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds. "A papal encyclical is rare," says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences who revealed the pope's plans when he delivered Cafod's annual Pope Paul VI lecture. "It is among the highest levels of a pope's authority. It will be 50 to 60 pages long; it's a big deal." The encyclical will be sent to the world's 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners. Within Catholicism in recent times, an encyclical is generally used for significant issues, and is second in importance only to the highest ranking document now issued by popes, an Apostolic Constitution. "Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialization, today we have changed the natural environment so much," says Sorondo. "If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences."

Francis's environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. "There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout," says Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant. "This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality." Francis will also be opposed by the powerful US evangelical movement, says Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has declared the US environmental movement to be "un-biblical" and a false religion. "The pope should back off," says Beisner. "The Catholic church is correct on the ethical principles but has been misled on the science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US."
PHP

Over 78% of All PHP Installs Are Insecure 112

Posted by Soulskill from the 2015-will-be-the-year-of-distrust-on-the-internet dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Anthony Ferrara, a developer advocate at Google, has published a blog post with some statistics showing the sorry state of affairs for website security involving PHP. After defining a list of secure and supported versions of PHP, he used data from W3Techs to find a rough comparison between the number of secure installs and the number of insecure or outdated installs. After doing some analysis, Ferrara sets the upper bound on secure installs at 21.71%. He adds, "These numbers are optimistic. That's because we're counting all version numbers that are maintained by a distribution as secure, even though not all installs of that version number are going to be from a distribution. Just because 5.3.3 is maintained by CentOS and Debian doesn't mean that every install of 5.3.3 is maintained. There will be a small percentage of installs that are from-source. Therefore, the real 'secure' number is going to be less than quoted." Ferrara was inspired to dig into the real world stats after another recent discussion of responsible developer practices.

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