Comment Re:New MMO's (Score 1) 85
For me great MMO was Underlight.
For me also a great MMO was Discworld MUD.
Aquaria Goes Open Source 58
A post on the Wolfire blog yesterday announced that the source code for Aquaria has now been released. Aquaria, an action-adventure, underwater sidescroller from Bit Blot, was part of the Humble Indie Bundle, which was so successful that the developers of four games pledged to release them as open source. This marks the final release, following Lugaru, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture. The source code is available from a Mercurial repository.
Comment Wider implications? (Score 1) 384
Does this case have much wider implications (as summary hints at) for the software licensing at large?
I haven't read the article yet, but it seems so.
Blizzard vs. Glider Battle Resumes Next Week 384
trawg writes "You paid for it, you have the DVD in your drive and the box on the floor next to your desk, but do you own the game? That's the question the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule on next week in the case between Blizzard, publisher of World of Warcraft, and MDY, publisher of the Glider bot. The Glider bot plays World of Warcraft for you, but Blizzard frowns on this, saying it voids the license agreement — you don't own the game, you only have a license to use it, and bots like Glider invalidate the license. The EFF has a good summary of the case as well. The case is due to be resumed on Monday."
Comment Re:Some Helpful Advise (Score 1) 528
Oh, right. On Linux, you just recompile your soft against security enhanced libraries et al. You have the source for most apps, and large percentage of it has patches that allow it to run in locked down environment.
Still, for some things you'll have to write your own patches, I guess quite a bit of FOSS also won't run 'off the shelf' for such an environment (but does it have to? Such environments are more common in *nix, and most anything that is supposed to run on very secure boxes does).
Still, if you do have something that noone else to execute in such an environment, you have much easier time doing that. In contrast on windows, you have to contact the developers of the software in question and hope the patches it will be in next release (yeah, right).
Comment Re:Just $2.2 Billion? (Score 1) 253
Thats Japanese we're talking about. There was a joke about ships around WW2 (and earlier) era. Where American ship has extra lavatory, Russian has an extra gun. Japanese? Two guns.
Comment Go go Grendizer! (Score 2, Funny) 253
They were culturally indoctrinated for years for stuff like this (random link to random giant robot anime ommited). I am not surprised.
Submission + - Japan Plans Moon Base built by Robots for Robots (popsci.com)
An anonymous reader writes: These ARE the droids we've been looking for. The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has plans to build a base on the Moon by 2020. Not for humans, but for robots, and built by robots, too. A panel authorized by Japan's prime minister has drawn up preliminary plans of how humanoid and rover robots will begin surveying the moon by 2015, and then begin construction of a base near the south pole of the moon. The robots and the base will run on solar power, with total costs about $2.2 billion USD, according to the panel chaired by Waseda University President Katsuhiko Shirai.
Comment Re:Mobile Phone Cameras (Score 1) 337
I use a really cheap Philips phone (~$30 equivalent), because I need my phone just to have conversations, and sometimes write an odd sms. And it has a huge battery life.
No camera on this one. There is an FM radio (that I haven't used for about a year).
I don't know what the people there are thinking, if there are no mobile PHONES, and not Camera+MP3player+blah-blah-blah-blah-blah+'oh, it also allows you to make phonecalls!' monstrocities.
Speak about bloatware.
Comment Re:"It's that simple" (Score 1) 195
They need some user interface insight into sorting those symbols then.
It would improve the situation, but I have to point out that Chinese and Japanese use IME for their systems of iconographic characters.
Comment Re:In other words (Score 5, Insightful) 160
In my experience end users always end up as guinea pigs in real world testing, one way or ther other...
While it is bad, it is mostly inevitable.
Comment Re:And why? (Score 3, Informative) 289
I am about half way through the article in the second link, and it is really interesting, and informative.
Maybe not news, but it is worth your time (or at least mine).
Comment Sounds to be nice location (Score 3, Interesting) 35
Good for them. Renewable energy. Lower cooling bills.
I wonder how large the datacenter needs to be to have a significant ecological impact?
Comment Re:A few caveats... (Score 0) 131
From the article:
The Russian Institute of Biophysics at the Moscow State Research Centre has been experimenting with single shocks rather than a long series. Their aim is to have an effect that is "instant or nearly so", but that incapacitates the target for a prolonged period. In tests on animals they have shown that with the right sort of electrical pulse (frequency appears to be the key), a shock lasting less than a hundredth of a second causes an electroconvulsive reaction that knocks the animal out for 20 seconds.
Western researchers have not validated the safety and effectiveness of this type of shock, but there is known to be work on similar technology in the US.
Nemtyshkin's next project, the Leyden Gun, will deliver a short shock with lasting effects
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Oh, sounds just wonderful. 3 hits with "a single jolt from a high-voltage capacitor" that "causes an electroconvulsive reaction that knocks" you out for 20 seconds, sounds much more non lethal and less dangerous to me! [/sarcasm]
Comment Re:A few caveats... (Score 0) 131
Well, even slow firing tazers aren't all that safe.
Is it just me, or does this 'burst shock', that persists longer increase the danger involved?
I second this it sounds 'not so non-lethal anymore' motion.
