sanyasi - Slashdot User

Submission + - Church of England Chastises Sony (physorg.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Saturday June 09, 2007 @11:53AM

eldavojohn writes: "The game "Resistance: Fall of Man" has been called sick & sacreligious by the Church of England due to a point in the game in which rival gunmen kill hundreds inside Manchester cathedral. The Church of England said that Sony did not ask for permission to use the cathedral in their game and demanded an apology. The bishop of Manchester is quoted as saying, "It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem. For a global manufacturer to recreate one of our great cathedrals with photorealistic quality and then encourage people to have gunbattles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible." A representative for Sony said a formal letter of apology will be sent Monday."

Submission + - Bill Gates Talk on The Computer Industry

Submitted by

pigscanfly.ca

on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:58PM

pigscanfly.ca writes: "The talk itself covers the past, present, and future of computing as of 1989. While the former two can be interesting to the high-tech historian, the real star is Bill Gates' prediction of computing yet to come. Like the now-legendary '640k' line, some of Gates' remarks are almost laughably off-mark ('OS/2 is the way of the future!'); and yet, by and large, he had accurately, chillingly, prophesied an entire decade or two of soft- and hardware development.

All in all, a fascinating talk from, it seems, one of the most powerful speakers in CS and IT."

PS3 Folding@Home Begins with Impressive Numbers 114

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:56PM from the make-science-history-in-your-living-room dept.

hansamurai writes "As we've previously discussed, the Folding@Home client is now available on the PS3, and already some early results are in. The total number of teraflops generated by PS3s has already exceeded all other OS contributions combined and the entire project is heading towards one petaflop of distributed computing power. Stanford notes that their teraflops calculation is conservatively calculated so the total power could be under-appreciated. With the PS3 European release complete and the Folding client already available to them, the number of users will continue to grow for the time being, let's hope that the project does not run out of work units to pass out. Kotaku has some numbers that are a few hours old since the Stanford server is getting hit pretty hard with the renewed interest in the project."

Submission + - Mice get human gene, can see color

Submitted by troll -1 on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:53PM

troll -1 writes: Mice are dichromats, they have only S and M cone pigments. They don't see color too well. But now researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of California at Santa Barbara have successfully transformed their vision by introducing a single human gene into a mouse chromosome. Jeremy Nathans, one of the authors of the study, describes it as 'the same evolutionary event that happened in one of the distant ancestors of all primates and that led ultimately to the trichromatic color vision'.

Submission + - New vote on .xxx Internet address nears

Submitted by

Billosaur

on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:52PM

Billosaur writes: "ICANN is once more set to vote on the creation of the .xxx Internet address. Though the proposal has been voted down by ICANN's board twice before, ICM Registry Inc., the group behind those previous proposals, resubmitted it after they "agreed to hire independent organizations to monitor porn sites' compliance with the new rules, which would be developed by a separate body called the International Foundation for Online Responsibility." Once more the proposal has led to pornographers and religious groups finding themselves on the same side, the porn industry worried that the domain would lead to government controls, the religious groups worried it would make access too easy and allow porn to expand even further onto the Internet."

Submission + - SCO Manipulating Wikipedia?

Submitted by

User L

on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:51PM

User L writes: "Not long after Microsoft was embroiled in controversy over their plan to pay a consultant for favorable edits to the OOXML articles, there's evidence that SCO may be following suit. While it's not unusual to see a Wikipedia user to get banned for vandalism, it's certainly interesting that that user is potentially a SCO employee, potentially even a SCO executive. Fortunately, Wikipedia administrators already have a handle on the vandalism, but can anyone here find definitive proof linking SCO to these edits?"

Submission + - Suing Spammer Sued for Spamming!

Submitted by Don't want to be SLAPP'd on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:23PM

Don't want to be SLAPP'd writes: David Linhardt and his Illinois-based opt-out-bulk-emailing (spamming) company "e360 Insight", who is suing Spamhaus for calling it a spammer, is being sued in California for spamming. Linhardt also recently sued the Usenet newsgroup "NANAS", a news-group where evidence of spam is posted. This seems to be an attempt to prevent spam sent by his company being publicly outed and archived. Unlike the SLAPP-type suits filed by the spammer, this one seems to have merit as the plaintiff was spammed in violation of both California and US federal law.

Submission + - Vulnerabilities in SCADA systems (power grid)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Storm Center is reporting that 6 different vulnerabilities have been reported in OPC servers used in SCADA systems (power grid, water systems, etc). Those vulnerabilities allow remote attackers to gain complete control of the affected systems. The vulnerabilities have been out for 2 months, but no known exploit exists.

Submission + - Open Standards going to a vote in Texas

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Friday March 23, 2007 @03:11PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Blogger and long-time OpenOffice.org community leader Sam Hiser tells us that a big vote on IT standards is coming on Monday, 26 March 2007 in Texas, and his blog has a link to a form you can send to Texas legislators who care about such things: 'This Monday, 26 March 2007, Texas lawmakers will be holding a hearing about adopting a technology policy for which open standards will play a key role. You do not need to be a Texas resident to let lawmakers how you feel about the importance of open standards.'"

Submission + - Pro Evo 6 Not Possible Online With PS3

Submitted by

mike@GWN

on Friday March 23, 2007 @02:54PM

mike@GWN writes: "Konami has announced that online functionality for the Playstation 2 version of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 will not be possible when the game is played on a Playstation 3 console."

Submission + - Does a Master's degree benefit an IT career?

Submitted by on Friday March 23, 2007 @02:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: Some people have claimed here that they have done fine career wise without degrees, and I was wondering about a situation in the opposite direction. Do master degrees help at all career wise in the IT or software development fields? Is there any value in mixing up your degrees, for example a bachelor's in CS and a master's in Applied Math or Business, or getting a CS master's degree to make up for a bachelor's in a non-IT field like science?

Submission + - Net neutrality = more infrastructure investments

Submitted by Gibson on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @01:42PM

Gibson writes: A new University of Florida study concludes that mandating network neutrality would result in increased infrastructure investment. Using game theory, the researchers created an analytical model and concluded that the end of net neutrality would also mean fewer service upgrades and infrastructure improvements. '"The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other," said researcher Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, a professor in the University of Florida's decision and information sciences department. "But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible."' ISPs requiring content providers to pay for preferred access could ultimately find themselves losing customers.

Why Exercise Boosts Brainpower 331

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @01:27PM from the muscle-head dept.

aditi sends us a report from Reuters on research indicating that exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss. Quoting: "Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice — and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise. They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise."

Submission + - France chooses Ubuntu Linux over Microsoft

Submitted by

iplayfast

on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @12:43PM

iplayfast writes: "Whilst France is currently in the throws of a vicious election campaign, it seems that quietly in the background another victory has taken place. The victory isn't just for freedom, it seems that the victory is for free software. Story here"

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