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Games

Why Warhammer Online Failed — an Insider Story 235

sinij writes "An EA insider has aired dirty laundry over what went wrong with Warhammer and what could this mean for the upcoming Bioware Star Wars MMORPG. Quoting: 'We shouldn't have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn't done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out. We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It's 'stable' now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project." The (unverified) insider, who calls himself EA Louse (named after the EA Spouse who brought to light the company's excessive crunchtime practices) says similar trouble is ahead for the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA has not commented yet. God of War creator David Jaffe has criticized the insider for having unrealistic expectations of working in the games industry.
Handhelds

When You Really, Really Want to Upgrade a Tiny Notebook 104

Benz145 writes "The famous Sony VAIO UX UMPC may have been cancelled a few years back by Sony, but the community at Micro PC Talk won't let it die. Modder Anh has carefully removed the relatively slow 1.33Ghz Core Solo CPU and installed a much faster Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 (a process which involves reballing the entire CPU). On top of this, he managed to install an incredibly small 4-port USB hub into the unit which allowed for the further instillation of a Huawei E172 modem for 3G data/voice/SMS, a GPS receiver, and a Pinnacle HD TV receiver. All of this was done without modifying the device's tiny external case. Great high-res pictures of the motherboard with the modded hardware can be seen through the link."

Comment Re:Possible hoax (Score 2, Interesting) 100

I'm pretty sure he's talking about using flash to develop native iOS apps. (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html).

BTW, I don't think I made it clear in my original post; the reason people think its a fake is because some stuff happens on the screen before he actually places the shape/figurine on it. He claims that his finger brushed the screen.

Comment Re:Possible hoax (Score 1) 100

Here's the guy's response to a comment about this on his website:

Non tu ne rêves pas, mais j’ai juste appuyé avec mon doigt au moment de prendre le pion et cela à créé un contact. La démo est développée en Flash et marche vraiment très bien. Nous sommes en train de la redévelopper en Objective C (merci Steve;-).

It says: No, your not dreaming. I just pressed (brushed?) my finger at the moment when I picked up the piece and that created a contact. The demo is developed in Flash and works very well. We're in the process of porting it to objective-c.

Comment Re:I appreciate the moral implications for some (Score 1) 388

I never really got how someone could hold view like this (that some abortions are ok). It seems to me like you can cut down the issue to one essential question: is the fetus a human life? If you think it is, then obviously no form of abortion is ok (its murder). If it's not, then abortion is no different then terminating a pregnancy by using contraception (or a woman's period, or male masturbation). All of these activities involve the potential to produce human life (steps in the process), but due to certain conditions the process is terminated. I don't see much of a middle ground here.
Linux

Slackware 13.1 Released 155

Several readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy-to-use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."

Comment Re:It's no secret (Score 1) 457

Lol, yep I really had to dig for the first result on google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=define%3Aatrocity). The first definition was from Princeton. Btw, the rest of the definitions are: An extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice - Wikitionary atrocities - are acts that are shockingly cruel - McGraw-Hill I excluded unrelated entries (like band names and movies). As for this being the first time that someone's criticized your literary style; isn't this the same as Godwin's law? Basically people are apt to use hyperboles in an argument online? I mean, stuff like this literally happens all the time on Slashdot. And finally, way to be a prick. We can't have a nice discussion about word choice in arguments without me having to "get over myself?"

Comment Re:It's no secret (Score 1) 457

atrocity: the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane an act of atrocious cruelty Look, I'm not arguing that businesses can't commit acts that could probably be called atrocities (see forced labor for the Nazi war machine) but until telecos start working Jews and Gypsies to death let's skip the colorful language.

Comment Re:What's the point? (Score 1) 148

I use Ubiquity all the time for text translation. You just highlight the text, bring up Ubiquity and type translate. IMO this is where ubiquity shines; its hardly bolted on, its a really natural way of instructing the browser to work with the page I have open. Its way more convenient than any other option since I don't have to switch pages/tabs.

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