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British Pizza Chain To Install Cones of Silence 122

Posted by samzenpus from the sound-of-silence dept.
itwbennett writes "British pizza chain Pizza Express is installing iPod docks and soundproof domes in booths of their new iPizzeria stores. 'The idea is that you can plug in your iPod and play whatever music you like without disturbing other diners,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'But I'm sure it'd work for talking about government secrets and other spy stuff, too.'"
Movies

The Home-Built Dark Knight Batmobile 87

Posted by samzenpus from the taking-the-little-jokers-to-school dept.
ElectricSteve writes "RM Auctions recently declared James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 to be 'the world's most famous car,' but there's no doubt that there is another contender for that title — the Batmobile. One thing that muddies the waters a bit is the fact that the term 'Batmobile' actually describes at least three different vehicles: the modified Lincoln Futura concept car from the '60s TV series, the vaguely Corvette-shaped 1989-and-beyond movie cars, and now the car from the most recent two movies, the military-spec Tumbler. Michigan-based movie props artist Bob Dullam really likes the Tumbler, so he did what any of us would do in his position — he built one of his own from scratch."
Businesses

BioWare On Why Making a Blockbuster Game Is a Poor Goal 192

Posted by Soulskill from the do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do dept.
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk spoke at the 2010 Develop Conference about the current focus within the video game industry on making huge, blockbuster titles, and why that is the wrong approach. Quoting Gamasutra's coverage: "'While blockbuster game creation is everything that most game developers working today growing up wanted to do, it's precisely the wrong thing to chase in gaming's contemporary landscape.' Risk-taking from publishers and investors has dramatically declined in recent times, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio-runner noted: 'As a result, innovation and creativity [are] being squeezed. Where the bottom of the market had dropped out at one point, now it’s the middle of the market has dropped out. Unless you can be in the top ten releases at one given time, it's unlikely that a triple-A game is going to make money.'" Zeschuk also commented that consoles aren't necessarily the future of game platforms, and that BioWare is experimenting with smaller scale MMO development in addition to working on their much larger upcoming Star Wars title.

Comment SugarCRM replacement ... (Score 1) 357

by kwandar (#32899470) Attached to: SugarCRM 6 Released, But Is It Open Source?
two years ago when looking for a system for our 200+ person company, I looked at SugarCRM. It was "okay", but there were licensing issues. Was it really open source? There were certainly questions at the time. Then I looked at VTiger. It was better than okay (and much improved since then, although I'm sure SugarCRM has improved too) and it was clearly open source.
Microsoft

Microsoft Patents "Fonts With Feelings" 150

Posted by timothy from the schoolhouse-rock-prior-art dept.
theodp writes "Seems like those old IBM flaming logo commercials (video) should count as prior art, but the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent Tuesday for inventing Fonts With Feelings. Giving font characters sound, motion, and altered appearance, Microsoft asserts, gives a user 'the impression the fonts have personalities,' thereby enhancing the user's understanding and/or fluency of words. From the patent: 'As a few non-limiting examples, the word 'giant' can get very large; the word 'lion' can morph into a line drawing of a lion; the word 'toss' can morph into a hand that animates a ball toss; the word 'bees' could show bees flying around with or without a 'buzz' sound effect'. If you're curious, Microsoft Research offers some explanations and examples of 'fontlings' in action — don't miss 'f' kicks 'a'!"
Image

New Hungarian Government OMGs All Gov Sites 59

Posted by samzenpus from the they-forgot-the-ponies dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The new Hungarian government chose to replace the home pages with a 'disclaimer' page on several governmental websites such as ministries or the Foreign Office. The title and the main message is 'OMG,' which is followed by an explanation that the inherited websites 'lack any kind of uniform structure' and this is 'unworthy of Hungary.' Today is the takeover day in most ministries for the new administration."
The Military

US Navy Considering Wii Fit and DDR For Boot Camp 104

Posted by Soulskill from the path-to-international-respect dept.
almehdaaol writes "New military recruits are coming in physically heavier and out of shape, so the US Navy has decided to take an interesting course of action by creating a new training regimen inspired by the fitness-centric Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution." This comes alongside a report confirming some of the BS we told our parents when we were growing up: "Bavelier said playing the kill-or-be-killed games can improve peripheral vision and the ability to see objects at dusk, and the games can even be used to treat amblyopia, or lazy eye, a disorder characterized by indistinct vision in one eye. She said she believes the games can improve math performance and other brain tasks."
Biotech

Crowdsourcing HIV Research 52

Posted by timothy from the work-backwards-to-zero dept.
biolgeek writes "In recent years, HIV has been managed with a collection of therapies. However, the virus will likely evolve around these drugs, making it crucially important to get a better understanding of the virus itself. An important step in understanding the virus is to get a handle on its genetic blueprint. William Dampier of Drexler University is taking a novel approach to this research by crowdsourcing his problem. He is hosting a bioinformatics competition, which requires contestants to find markers in the HIV sequence that predict a change in the severity of the infection (as measured by viral load). So far the best entry comes from Fontanelles, an HIV research group, which has been able to predict a change in viral load with 66% accuracy."

Comment Kicked Rogers Cable out 2 years ago ... (Score 2, Interesting) 502

by kwandar (#32059812) Attached to: One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010

.. and couldn't be happier.

It wasn't so much that we switched to internet (we did somewhat for my wife's foreign language programs) but a value for money proposition. We were getting close to zero value (unless you count our daughter's watching Treehouse or whatever it was .... and that was becoming a problem).

We have been better off financially without Rogers, and our daughter gets 2 movie nights a week and she is FAR better behaved/attentive/learning enabled without television. We're a few years behind (starting on Madmen now) but there are definite advantages to that. We don't waste time on crap,or ads.

Submission + - PS3 Singstar Online Protest Underway (playstation.com)

Submitted by kwandar
kwandar writes: One claim to fame the PS3 can arguably make (my 4 year old would agree) is its Singstar karaoke game. Users can pay to download music videos and perform in front of their PS3 eye cameras to upload it to the Sony Singstar universe to be rated.

Unfortunately some users have been stuffing the ballot box and spoiling the fun by voting through the creation of multiple IDs, a problem which Sony has failed to address

Users have taken it upon themselves to protest Sony's inaction with a "1 vote by PS3 — and not by ID-PSN" video that has inundated the video upload channel with protest signs. This will eventually have an effect on Sony's revenues for downloadable Singstar content ... unlike the removal of the alternate OS. Maybe that will motivate Sony to finally act.

Now if someone would just start a protest regarding the "Sony lock-in" that stops us from copying Singstar videos users make (ie.home movies) to other mediums

Submission + - Russian Hacker Selling 1.5M Facebook Accounts (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by Sir Codelot
Sir Codelot writes: A hacker who calls himself Kirllos has obtained and is now offering to sell 1.5 million Facebook IDs at astonishingly low prices — $25 per 1000 IDs for users with fewer than 10 friends and $45 per 1000 IDs for users with more than 10 friends. Looking at the numbers, Kirllos has stolen the IDs of one out of every 300 Facebook users.

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