varcher75 - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Strange History Of The Vectrex

Submitted by

simoniker

on Monday December 17, 2007 @11:20AM

simoniker writes: "The 'ambitious and unusual' vector-based Vectrex console was one of the most intriguing game console failures of all time, and Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton continue their 'History Of Gaming Platforms' series over at Gamasutra by analyzing the rise, fall, and legacy of the cult '80s console. From the intro: "GCE's vector-based Vectrex failed to win massive audiences, like the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS) or the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) did. Nevertheless, the distinctive platform gained a cult following after being pulled from the market in 1984, two years after its debut, and now enjoys one of the finest homebrew development scenes of any vintage system.""

Submission + - Brain grown in jar pilots F-22 sim (pantherhouse.com) 5

Submitted by NJ Hewitt on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:40AM

NJ Hewitt writes: "Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to pilot an F-22 jet simulator." The brain, with neurons connected to 60 electrodes, at first had no ability to pilot the fighter jet, but slowly learned and can now reliably navigate through even hurricane-force winds in the simulator.

Submission + - Robots that bounce in bed (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

nem75

on Friday December 14, 2007 @08:41AM

nem75 writes: "The NY Times has a review of British AI researcher David Levy's book "Love and Sex with Robots". He claims that within a span of about 50 years the day will come, when people could actually fall in love with life-like robots and want to live with them instead of a human mate. While this may seem far fetched at first, he has some pretty interesting views on this. Like the sexual part being the easyest thing, what with brothels exclusively offering life-like sex dolls already existing in Japan and South Korea. The case he builds goes much further though, and certainly provides food for thought."

Submission + - Cold patch found in the cosmic background (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Friday December 14, 2007 @05:18AM

KentuckyFC writes: "Astronomers have found a cold spot in the cosmic microwave background radiation. This patch is huge: in terms of angular size, it's several times bigger than moon. And it represents a significant puzzle because no current scenario for the origin of the universe can explain it. For the moment theorists are just struggling to understand its properties (abstract on the physics arxiv)."

Submission + - Follow-up on EvE's Boot.ini Issue

Submitted by Krinsath on Thursday December 13, 2007 @09:14PM

Krinsath writes: CCP, publishers of Eve Online, have posted a Dev Blog detailing the circumstances leading up to the deletion of XP's boot.ini file, which was earlier covered on Slashdot. The blog is decently detailed about how the mistake occurred (a new installer from their normal one), how they responded and what CCP has learned from it. While fairly dry, it is to the company's credit that they're being open about one of the more serious bugs to crop up in gaming's recent history.

Submission + - Major french ISP enables native IPv6

Submitted by varcher75 on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @05:51AM

varcher75 writes: French "low-cost" ISP Free threw a challenge in 2005: "If there's 10,000 subscribers ready to pay 1 euro for this IPV6 'gadget', I'll do it". Before long, there were far more than 10 thousand geeks ready to throw their money down the pot, but no more was heard on the subject for a while. However, earlier last month, registration of an IPv6 prefix appeared for Proxad, the holding controlling the ISP operation.

Today, Free launched officially its native IPv6 support in a press announce. While professional-oriented ISP Nerim offered native IPv6 in France much earlier, this is one of the first large consumer-oriented ISP to start the switchover process to the next generation of Internet Protocol.

The announce appear to be a bit premature, as the mentioned IPv6 switch doesn't appear yet on the management console, but it shouldn't be long before french geeks can start typing their favorite IPv6 blog address 2001:6f8:37a:1::1 by hand...

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