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Classic Games (Games)

Lost Online Games From the Pre-Web Era 186

Posted by Soulskill from the you-are-no-match-for-my-imperial-starship dept.
harrymcc writes "Long before the Web came along, people were playing online games — on BBSes, on services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, and elsewhere. Gaming historian Benj Edwards has rounded up a dozen RPGs, MUDs, and other fascinating curiosities from the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s — and the cool part is: they're all playable on the Web today." What old games were good enough for you to watch them scroll by on your 300 baud modem?
Microsoft

Child Abuse Verdict Held Back By MS Word Glitch 191

Posted by samzenpus from the messy-verdict dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last week several defendants including one high-profile TV presenter were sentenced in Portugal in what has been known as the Casa Pia scandal. The judges delivered on September 3 a summary of the 2000-page verdict, which would be disclosed in full only three days later. The disclosure of the full verdict has been postponed from September 8 to a yet-to-be-announced date, allegedly because the full document was written in several MS Word files which, when merged together, retained 'computer related annotations which should not be present in any legal document.' (Google translated article.) Microsoft specialists were called in to help the judges sort out the 'text formatting glitch,' while the defendants and their lawyers eagerly wait to access the full text of the verdict."
Television

How High-Tech Gadget Trends Differ By US Region 51

Posted by kdawson from the you-say-potato dept.
Ant writes in with news of a study revealing differences in gadget preferences by US region. The survey is not rigorous, based as it was on 7,500 online questionnaires submitted to Retrevo, a website for tech shoppers. The company plans to run the survey annually. "...in the smartphone category, the state of Maryland came out on top with 48 percent more households owning at least one such handset than elsewhere in the country. ... In iPad use, the state of New York took top honors. According to the survey, 52 percent more households have at least one iPad in the Empire State. ... Massachusetts beat out the rest of the nation in e-reader adoption..."

Comment No problem printing to Serious printers (Score 1) 188

by ErrorBase (#28893315) Attached to: Linux-Friendly Label Printer Recomendations?
I have seen people say it before, but if you buy a more serious barcode printer than a Dymo thermo printer; like an Intermec, Zebra or Monarch they support (their own flavour) of an ascii based printing language. The downside is lock-in. once you got it working for intermac's (IPL) it probably will not run directly on Zebra's (ZPL). These printers are made to Always work, and in general kan handle quite a lot of physical abuse. You can most of the time put in special labels or ink transfers to make the label work in the crasiest of circumstances. These printers most of the time support stuff like Maxicode, PDF417 or Qcode becides some easier codes as Code128 and 3of9. The advanced ones let you even 'print' RFID's Spoolfiles tend to be extreemly small (like 200-400bytes for a label without an image, packed with barcodes) The downside is that you will not get a nice looking GUI, and that creating a label is like creating a dialog in Clipper. (does my age show ?)
The Courts

Pirate Bay Day 5 — Prosecution Tries To Sneak In Evidence 341

Posted by Soulskill from the not-sneaky-enough dept.
Hodejo1 writes "On the old Perry Mason TV shows, it was a common sight to see someone burst into the crowded courtroom at a dire moment and confess aloud that they, not the defendant, killed so-and-so. In reality, courts do not allow evidence to enter trial without a chance for the opposing council to view it and for a judge to rule on their admissibility. Yet, in the fifth day of the Pirate Bay trial, lawyers for the prosecution again tried to sneak in surprise evidence while questioning defendants. The judge put his foot down this time, telling lawyers for the state, 'If you have documents which you eventually plan to use, you need to hand them over now.' The prosecution continues to struggle in court. In one humorous moment, prosecutor Håkan Roswall tried to show how 'hip' he was with technology when he questioned defendant Peter Sunde. 'When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?' asked the Prosecutor. 'We do not use the expression IRL,' said Peter, 'We use AFK.' The defendants are not out of the woods yet. Lawyer and technology writer Richard Koman wonders aloud if the Pirate Bay's 'I-dunno' defense is all that much better."
Communications

Arranging Electronic Access For Your Survivors? 335

Posted by timothy from the leave-a-note-on-the-fridge dept.
smee2 writes "In the past, when a family member died, you could look through their files and address books to find all the people and businesses that should be notified that the person is deceased. Now the hard-copy address book is becoming a thing of the past. I keep some contact information in a spreadsheet, but I have many online friends that I only have contact with through web sites such as Flickr. My email accounts have many more people listed than my address book spreadsheet. I have no interest in collecting real world info from all my online contacts. The sites where I have social contact with people from around the world (obviously) require user names and passwords. Two questions: 1. How do you intend to let the executors of your estate or family members know which online sites/people you'd like them to notify of your demise? 2. How are you going to give access to the passwords, etc. needed to access those sites in a way that doesn't cause a security concern while you're still alive?"
Robotics

Submission + - Biped walking robots that walk like man (tudelft.nl)

Submitted by
ErrorBase
ErrorBase writes: "Since the start of the Delft Biorobotics Laboratory research has been done on the development of walking bipeds, based on the principle of passive dynamic walking. Flame is our first fully 3D walking robot with electric actuation. Similar as in the previous model, Maxon DC motors are used to actuate several joints: two sagittal ankle joints, two sagittal knee joints, two sagittal hip joints and one lateral hip joint (for sideways foot placement)."
Security

Submission + - Software patent defendant seeks support of FOSS

Submitted by
ErrorBase
ErrorBase writes: "Linux.com writes : Barracuda Networks is actively seeking the support of the free and open source software (FOSS) community in its battle against a patent suit brought against it by Trend Micro. The suit revolves around Barracuda's distribution of Clam Antivirus (ClamAV), the well-known FOSS security software, with its firewall and Web filter hardware appliances. Story ia also here and here.
Is it again a clear case of "If you can't win, then sue". Or is Barracuda pulling FOSS in the water for pure self interest.
There are already calls to Boycott Trend Micro, complete with fancy artwork."
Patents

Submission + - Barracuda Networks seeks help in definding ClamAV 3

Submitted by taoman1
taoman1 writes: Trend Micro has accused ClamAV of infringing a patent it owns, #5,623,600. It specifically has named Barracuda Spam Firewall, the Barracuda Web Filter, and the Barracuda IM Firewall as infringing. Trend Micro has been trying to get Barracuda to either pay license royalties for including ClamAV or stop using ClamAV in its products. Barracuda is an Open Invention Network licensee, and it decided to stand up and defend ClamAV against what it views as a bogus claim. Barracuda believes the patent is questionable, at best, and believes there is prior art to be found and is seeking assistance to find it.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Nortel's Edholm on the future of work

Submitted by Tinkel
Tinkel writes: Nortel's enterprise CTO — Phil Edholm (he of 'Edholm's law') — has been discussing the company's work with university students — specifically learning how they use social networks and virtual worlds such as Second Life. The future workplace is likely to involve a lot more of these technologies, according to Edholm who looks forward to a time when bandwidth across all types of networks enables "true mobile broadband"...

From the article:
"Information and interaction are coming together and it's not going to be information technology it's going to be information and interaction technology in a few years."
Television

Submission + - BBC iPlayer spinal tap Easter Egg? (imageshack.us)

Submitted by mr-mafoo
mr-mafoo writes: I noticed, whilst watching some of auntie's best through the online iPlayer, a potential easter egg. The volume slider on the BBC's browser-based flash version of its viewing service doesn't cap at the standard arbitrary 10, its goes all the way up to 11. Thats what makes its special.

To those of you who are currently scratching their heads in confusion, this is a reference to the classic sequence in the 80's Parody-Rockumentary Spinal Tap, and a certain guitar amp that went up to 11.

The character Nigel Tufnel justified it as follows: "Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? "

Sadly I don't know if people outside of the UK can view the player.

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