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XBox (Games)

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."
Graphics

DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201

MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
Microsoft

Microsoft Game Software Preps Soldiers For Battle 44

coondoggie writes "Soldiers may go into battle better prepared to handle equipment and with a greater knowledge of their surroundings after an intellectual property licensing deal Monday between Microsoft and Lockheed Martin that will deepen the defense giant's access to visual simulation technology. The intellectual property agreement between the two focuses on Microsoft ESP, a games-based visual simulation software platform for the PC."

Comment Don't forget... (Score 1) 258

...the fact that the battery is not 'user serviceable', which means they took away the battery door, put a warranty sticker over the battery and will charge you to replace the battery. Fun, eh?
Medicine

Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' 539

SpuriousLogic writes "A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain. He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. 'It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,' he said."

Comment Maybe there's another reason. (Score 1) 361

There's a warning on the comparison site that a number of players, big name free players, don't correctly play Theora. In fact, Media Player Classic doesn't play it that video all. It's been many months since I've encountered a video that program couldn't play, so why if it's this great open source media codec do so many programs, some of them open source themselves, have a problem playing it?
Databases

Has MySQL Forked Beyond Repair? 334

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the effect recent developments in the MySQL community will have on MySQL's future in the wake of Oracle's acquisition of Sun. Even before Oracle announced its buyout, there were signs of strain within the MySQL community, with key MySQL employees exiting and forks of the MySQL codebase arising, including Widenius' MariaDB. Now Widenius' Oracle-less Open Database Alliance adds further doubt as to which branch of MySQL will be considered 'official' going forward. 'Forks are a fact of life in the open source community, and arguably an entirely healthy one,' McAllister writes. 'Oracle just better hope it doesn't end up on the wrong side of the fork.' To do so, he suggests Oracle will have to regain the the trust and support of the MySQL community — in other words, 'stop acting like Oracle.'"

Comment Re:For the love of god (Score 1) 174

It's not paranoia. It's the idea that I give up system resources, however small, to an updater for an app I might play with once a month or so. That 99% of the population you deal with - I bet they bitch that their computers gradually become slower as they age. You know why? Those people let a bunch of little programs like this run rampant on their computer eventually eating it up. Besides, apps can check for updates when they start up and ask you if you want to update then. Memory-resident updaters are never necessary. Ever.

Comment Re:For the love of god (Score 5, Informative) 174

And don't forget to turn off the scheduled event to turn the service back on. And don't forget to do it all over again every time you install/update anything by Google. Also, the instructions to kill it don't seem to be the same all the time. Maybe it depends on exactly what app you're installing. Maybe it's just Google trying to screw with my mind. Google Update needs to die.

Comment My story (Score 1) 3

Kingston 2GB microSD. It started to slow down, both in read speed and write speed. This lasted about a day and I didn't think much of it. Then it would completely stop for 5-10 seconds at a time during read/write. It was at this point I copied all the data from it which I was able to do, albeit slowly. The slowdown increased until I formatted it. The format said it worked but afterward I was unable to read/write or format it in any device I had. If I plugged it into my card reader Windows would seize up until I took it out again. Sent it to Kingston, they exchanged it.

Keep in mind these things are very susceptible to static. I think a lot of the sudden death stories can be attributed to a nasty little jolt.

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