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Comment Re:Brilliant. Go Steve! (Score 1) 609

It's quite different from the HSD in that it has three inputs, contrary to what GP said - one power input, and two control inputs, both of which ought to require just a fraction of the input power to control the input/output gear ratio. Watch the video in TFA instead of instantly dismissing it as "has been done before".
Nintendo

Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game 287

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Comment Re:Fahrenheit: It's for telling temperature (Score 1) 1233

Genuinely curious to know: are AC units and other heating/cooling devices rated at kCal in places where the metric system is dominant?

Not being in the heating/cooling business, I really have no idea what units the professionals use, but in the few product sheets I looked up on consumer devices, the cooling power output is always given in kW, while some also specify BTU/h.

Although much more useful info for either system would be how much energy is required to cool/heat a given volume of air 1 degree. Probably doesn't line up as neatly.

You're probably right.

Comment Re:Fahrenheit: It's for telling temperature (Score 1) 1233

Though I prefer metric (since I'm stuck with US measures at work, so I know how confused they can be) the advantage of Fahrenheit is that raising 1 pound mass of water 1 degree F takes 1 BTU (though at what temperature this is strictly true, I forget). This is a useful convention in the heating and air conditioning business. I don't think that there is a similar easy conversion in the metric system.

Raising 1kg of water 1 degree Celsius takes 1 kcal. That holds true except for when it passes from solid to liquid, or liquid to gas.

Security

Submission + - Online game unleashes unholy rage on abusers (arstechnica.com) 1

Earthquake Retrofit writes: Ars has a story about Eve Online dropping 9000 accounts for real-world trading of in-game money for profit. From the article:

"Those who buy and sell ISK, the game's currency, are not only exploiting the game, but unbalancing play. That's why the company decided to go drastic: a program they called "Unholy Rage,"

For weeks they studied the behavior and effects these real-money traders had on the game, and then they struck. During scheduled maintenance, over 6,000 accounts were banned. Hreiðarsson assures us that the methods were sound, and the bannings went off with surgical precision.

While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2 percent of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30 percent."

Looks like they got the right 6000.

GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Working with Ogg Theora and the video tag (fsf.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The Free Software Foundation's Holmes Wilson is just back from Berlin, where he participated in the Ogg Theora book sprint put on by FLOSS Manuals. Here is a broad look at Ogg Theora and how it fits into the push for free formats: where we're winning, what works, and what could be improved.
Education

Submission + - New species of worms release 'bombs' (yahoo.com)

caffiend666 writes: "A newly found deep ocean worm 'can cast off green glowing body parts, a move scientists think may be a defensive effort to confuse attackers. Researchers have dubbed the newly discovered critters "green bombers."' ... 'The first of the new species has been given the scientific name Swima bombiviridis.' So, it's a naturally occuring animal that rips off it's arms and throws them and we're not talking about a game from ID Sofware?"

Comment Re:Explain (Score 1) 713

It's not an active lockout per se, but a lockout all the same since you're getting an OS "for free" whenever you buy a computer, there's no incentive whatsoever to try out any alternatives. Picture the situation where a new PC comes with an empty hard drive and it's up to Joe Sixpack whether he wants to shell out $299 or whatever XP costs these days or $0 for e.g. Ubuntu linux which should be installed and configured in about the same time.

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