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Data Storage

Submission + - Why we hate lawyers in IT: Reason No. 1,997

jcatcw writes: How many laws affect IT? Steve Duplessie says zillions. Most are about record retention, and they were a boon to the storage industry. The lawyers on the good side put tough laws in place to say, "Thou shalt keep stuff, electronic or other, so that we can see it when we think you're a lying dirtbag." The lawyers on the bad side then started making money, first by trying to show their clients how to skirt the issue, and then by showing them how to comply. But now retention isn't enough. You have to also find the stuff. There are numerous approaches to the problem, but they seem to be lumped into these basic categories: 1. Let someone else deal with it; 2. Categorize and classify things up front; 3. Index stuff in the backup stream; 4. Internal search technologies.
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio: Industry Leading IDE, but in what?

Yoooder writes: "I've used Visual Studio 2005 for some time, but the longer I use it the more frustrated I get with it. Amid all it's wonderful features there's something smelly, something that oozes from the cracks and lets me know that underneath me there is something disturbing and wrong. Random crashes, out of control memory usage, a finicky designer, and a lack of updates all plague this IDE — and the grand-daddy of them all is a Service Pack that runs umpteen times, requiring user interaction the whole way through and lacking proof of any real fixes.

Does anyone else have the feeling that Microsoft's flagship programming tool is a victim of Too Much Too Fast? What are your horror stories within the unpredictable vessel of vs2005?"
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - New Job Board Has Really Cool & Unique Technol

Carl Williams writes: "I recently discovered a new IT job board called Odinjobs. It is for IT professionals, but what is different about it is the technology. They claim to have an in-house developed technology that "reads" your resumes for context much more accurately than keywords. This technology allows job seekers to save valuable time by prioritizing relevant job opportunities. There is also a RSS feed available that will only bring the most relevant jobs to job seekers."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - FreedroidRPG 0.10.1 is out!

FreedroidRPG development team writes: "Version 0.10.1 of FreedroidRPG, the open-source isometric role playing game featuring Tux, has been released on Sunday, Februar 25th.
This new release brings lots of small improvements, mostly in the form of bug fixes and new UI features:

# Dozens of bugs fixed
# Performance improvements, especially on load/save operations.
# A few tweaks to dialogs
# Started implementing magical items
# An alpha-stage translation support for dialogs has been written. German version included.
# Gameplay slightly adjusted — items don't wear out as fast as before"
The Internet

Submission + - Get arrested for using free wifi at the library

edmicman writes: "Tech news outlets are reporting a story from Alaska where a man's laptop was confiscated after he was caught playing online games using the library's free WiFi connection:

Brian Tanner was sitting in his Acura Integra recently outside the Palmer Library playing online games when a Palmer police pulled up behind him. The officer asked him what he was doing. Tanner, 21, was using the library's wireless Internet connection. He was told that his activity constituted theft of services and was told to leave. The next day, Sunday, police spotted him there again.
"
Software

Submission + - Lightroom vs. Aperture

Nonu writes: Adobe has officially released its Aperture killer, Lightroom, and the reviews are starting to pop up. Ars looks at Lightroom and concludes that it's a better choice for those without bleeding-edge hardware. 'Aperture's main drawback is still performance as it was designed for bleeding edge machines. On a quad Core 2 Duo Xeon, it is very usable but Lightroom just feels faster for everything regardless of hardware. Since Aperture relies on Core Image and a fast video card to do its adjustments (RAW decoding is done by the CPU), it's limited to what the single 3-D card can do. Lightroom does everything with the CPU and so it is likely to gain more speed as multicore systems get faster.'
Programming

Submission + - Open vs. Closed Source Security

ChelleChelle writes: "Which is more secure — open or closed source systems? It's a question sure to start a heated argument among any group of developers. But why bother to argue if you don't know all the facts? This article takes a close look at this debate and defines its essential elements."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Homework!?

An anonymous reader writes: With all the talk about Blizzard lately, I was asked a question about Guild Wars and World of Warcraft. While both games address different aspects, how would you get Blizzard to drop the monthly fee for WoW without trying to generate a force needed to compensate for the entropy of the players' need to play the game? After all, the no monthly free works for Guild Wars, so the model itself is fine. Or perhaps the question should be stated, how would you get this model to be the accepted form for all MMORPGs? Also, assume that the person asking me will not accept impossible for an answer. I would like to know your thoughts.
Biotech

Submission + - Study Indicates Autism is Mostly Genetic

Old Man Kensey writes: A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the nonprofit foundation Autism Speaks has found multiple verifiable genetic links to the development of autism, including a gene involved in glutamate metabolism, a process implicated in other childhood neurological disorders like epilepsy. One researcher went so far as to say the findings indicate that autism may be as much as 90% genetic.

A Criticism of Race Portrayal in Games 141

Joystiq points out (and comments incitefully on) a two-part examination of African-American roles in videogames on the site Black Voice News. Series author Richard Jones takes the videogame industry to task for the numerous poor images that young black people have to compare themselves to. He singles out Carl Johnson, the protagonist of GTA: San Andreas as an example. Jones also acknowledges that 'the video game industry is all about money', pointing out the unfortunate lack of black designers and illustrators in the industry to sway the creative choices of publisheres and developers. He gives a call to arms to black players, saying they should focus some of their passion on the skills required to make games. They'd get rich, he says, and work to reverse some of the negative stereotypes that non-whites are subject to in games. The Opposable Thumbs blog takes a critical look at his argument, offering up another side to the story. While it's obvious that Mr. Jones doesn't have a great grasp on the games industry itself, he would seem to make a few valid points as well.
The Courts

Blizzard Officially Files Against WoW Glider 179

Marcus Eikenberry writes "Blizzard and Vivendi today filed against MDY Industries, the makers of the 'WoW Glider' software. Glider allows World of Warcraft players to 'play' while away from the keyboard; the software moves the player's avatar along a set path, following a complex set of instructions dictated in advance. Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages. Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property. They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game. Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections."
Media

Submission + - new tool for **AA to wage war on the populous

torxim writes: a new content piece of content recognition software has been developed that takes movie clips and identifies if it is material under copyright or not. I just wonder what database the software compares against, and if they will have licenses to all of that material as well.

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