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Games

8-Year Fan-Made Game Project Shut Down By Activision 265

Posted by Soulskill from the of-doors-and-ways-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Activision, after acquiring Vivendi, became the new copyright holder of the classic King's Quest series of adventure game. They have now issued a cease and desist order to a team which has worked for eight years on a fan-made project initially dubbed a sequel to the last official installment, King's Quest 8. This stands against the fact that Vivendi granted a non-commercial license to the team, subject to Vivendi's approval of the game after submission. After the acquisition, key team members had indicated on the game's forums (now stripped of their original content by order of Activision) that Activision had given the indication that it intended to keep its current fan-game licenses, but was not interested in issuing new ones."
PlayStation (Games)

PS3 Hacked? 296

Posted by Soulskill from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Games

Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209

Posted by Soulskill from the i-blame-ralph dept.
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."

Comment Re:Oh, quit whining (Score 1) 243

by jrjarrett (#28362033) Attached to: NSA Email Surveillance Pervasive and Ongoing
The problem is that it is one thing for a concerned citizen to write their congressman and vote; but it takes someone who is really one in a million to run for office -- and it usually falls to the rich ones, not the righteous ones.

There. Fixed it for you.

But on a more serious note, it takes a large sum of cash to run for office these days. To garner enough to run for office, one either needs to be independently wealthy, or spend all of one's time raising donations rather than campaigning.
Programming

The ASP.NET Code Behind Whitehouse.gov 143

Posted by kdawson from the netcraft-confirms-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The author looks at the markup for the new whitehouse.gov site, launched today. It uses ASP.NET and various JavaScript libraries. It suffers from various inefficiencies, most easily remedied. Check the images and techniques used to build the site front-end."
Censorship

Submission + - Man Nearly Arrested for Using iPhone During Flight

Submitted by jrjarrett
jrjarrett writes: A man was using his iPhone in "airplane mode" (all wireless/cell functions disabled) to watch a movie, when he was told to stop.

From the story:

Casey wrote in his story to the publication that a flight attendant came over to him and ordered him to turn off his phone. "He said something to the effect of 'you can't use a cell phone in flight' ... I assured him that I had the phone in airplane mode and that all cell, wifi and bluetooth was off," wrote Casey.

"About 10 minutes later, the same guy comes back and waves his hand in front of my face, I pause the movie again, and look over at him. He says that I am not allowed to use a cell phone in flight and I am breaking FAA rules," his story continues.

After further protesting, Casey said the flight attendant yelled, "You have to do anything I say. I am going to have you arrested."

Yes, I think we all know that cell phone use is prohibited during flight. I also am sure that flight attendants have a fairly thankless and difficult job. However, I also think airlines need to keep their flight attendants up-to-date on current entertainment technology. And, that telling a passenger, "You have to do anything I say," and having a passenger arrested isn't going to look good on a customer sat survey.
Wine

No Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth 328

Posted by Zonk from the make-sure-to-sip dept.
yuna49 writes "News from last week, but still worth noting: Mark Shuttleworth told eWeek in a May 3rd interview that Dell will not include open-source software such as Wine with the PCs it plans to bundle with Ubuntu Linux. Says Shuttleworth: 'I do not want to position Ubuntu and Linux as a cheap alternative to Windows ... While Linux is an alternative to Windows, it is not cheap Windows. Linux has its own strengths, and users should want it because of those strengths and not because it's a cheap copy of Windows ... Often we see proprietary software companies just completely fail to understand not only the motivations of the Linux community, but also the processes. It's very practical, there's a way to get things done, and it's different. The VMware guys have really engaged with us completely and worked to the agenda set by the Linux community, which is not an ideological agenda but a practical one.' Does that mean Wine won't even be listed in the package manager?"
Google

Judges Rule Google Search by Employer Not Illegal 185

Posted by Zonk from the mebbe-you-shouldn't-be-talking-about-that-online dept.
An anonymous reader passed us a link to an Ars Technica article about a failed lawsuit over a Google search. A federal circuit court of appeals has upheld the original ruling against David Mullins, who claimed that Googling his name constituted ex parte communications prior to firing him. "Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, and traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be ... Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct. Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force."
Data Storage

Building an ODF Intranet Portal? 19

Posted by Cliff from the how-would-you-do-it dept.
jeevesbond writes "I have been doing some feasibility work on creating a FLOSS Intranet Portal for ODF documents; the first task is to find existing projects that already provide some of the required functionality. The requirements are: version control — including diff and merge capabilities for ODF; integration with OpenOffice for check-in/out as a starting point; a Web-based CMS for group sharing of files (preferably one that can be extended to perform other tasks); and network authentication for the CMS (so users don't have to login twice). The eventual aim is to be able to bundle all this up in some way: 'apt-get odf-portal', for instance. Which FLOSS tools would you use for this job? How would you handle diffs and merges for ODF documents?"
Software

Submission + - DOA with SOA

Submitted by UML Commando
UML Commando writes: Are you DOA with SOA? This is a great article reminding us yet again that there are no silver bullets...there is no way to avoid rolling up ones sleeves and actually doing some engineering when adopting SOA or any other technology.

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