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IBM

The Mainframe: Dead Or Alive?->

Submitted by FlorianMueller
FlorianMueller writes "When the EU Commission launched its antitrust investigation against IBM last week, some were wondering whether there would still be mainframes around when the case is settled. But not so fast: eWEEK Europe just conducted a poll on mainframe spendings, and 30% of the respondents even plan to increase their mainframe capacities. At a recent presentation of the new mainframe generation, an IBM executive boldly said: "Western civilization runs on this system." So does IBM, owing 25% of its revenues and more than 40% of its total profits to the mainframe business. Mainframe software is a $24.5 billion market, twice as big as the Linux market. 200-300 billion lines of legacy code (much of it in COBOL) are still in use. So it's not just Microsoft and patent activists who take an interest in this."
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Programming

The Desktop Gets No Respect, No Respect at All 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "We have more computing power on each of our personal desktops than probably the entire world had in the early '60s, writes a frustrated John C. Dvorak. But we cannot find anything to do with it except surf the Web, check out Facebook and play the idiotic Farmville. We've lost sight of the power of the desktop, laments Dvorak, and have instead been seduced by 'dipstick apps that really do very little except amuse monkeys.' The computer is not an appliance, he argues, and requiring training in its use and operation should be required. No doubt he'd approve of Dave Winer's recent call for every person who graduates with a bachelor's degree to have one semester of programming."
Games

Gamers dress as zombies to raise R18+ awareness-> 1

Submitted by swandives
swandives writes "Australian gamers will dress as zombies to raise awareness about the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in the country. The protest will begin at Hyde Park Fountain on March 27 and lumber through Sydney, raising awareness of the need for a higher classification rating and hopefully causing a bit of havoc at the same time! Computerworld Australia has pictures of previous zombie protests in the lead-up to the event. Australia has a long history of lobbying for an R18+ games classification but, even after a decade, video games are banned from sale if they exceed the maximum M15+ classification.

So far, the list of banned titles includes 7 Sins, Risen, Left 4 Dead 2 and Dark Sector. Others, like Alien Vs Predator, were initially banned but appealed the rating and are now MA15+."
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Idle

2009 Darwin Award Winners announced->

Submitted by Greg Lindahl
Greg Lindahl writes "From the woman who jumped in a swollen creek to rescue her drowning ... moped, to the man who hopped over the divider at the edge of the highway to take a leak, and plunged 65 feet to his death, 2009 was a year both exceptional and unexceptional for Darwin Award-worthy behavior!"
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Intel

SPAM: Intel Launches Next-Gen Atom N450 Processor 1

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes "Intel has unveiled its next-generation Atom N450 processor and a review of the new Asus Eee PC 1005PE netbook that houses it, shows decent gains in performance and lower power consumption. The Atom N450 has been re-architected similar to Intel's other notebook processors in that it now has an integrated memory controller and graphics core on the CPU itself. In addition, Intel's serial DMI (Direct Media Interface) now replaces the system bus to the Southbridge IO controller. From a performance standpoint, the Atom N450 single core chip offers a nice performance gain versus previous generation Atom CPUs and it appears Intel has dual core variants of the chip on the horizon as well."
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Comment: crapflood (Score 1) 44

by 800DeadCCs (#30399736) Attached to: Building <em>Left 4 Dead</em> Maps With Google Sketchup

OK... So you can make a map out of something else.
Doesn't mean you should.

Not because of the "oh my god, they're shooting in a school/church/hospital/mall/brothel" (fuck people who go off like that),
It's because there's too much out there that's just crap. Probably about 90% of it.

If you're going to do it, go over it and make sure there aren't places where you can get stuck, be sure zombies don't spawn in the safe room, and at least make an effort with the textures.

Comment: Re:Wouldn't want that now would we? (Score 1) 174

by 800DeadCCs (#30282046) Attached to: Games Workshop Goes After Fan Site

When 4.0 came out, my first thought was "This is a P&P version of a computer RPG"... Specifically, it reminded me of the Baldurs Gate games for PS2.
Then when they pulled all their PDFs, I just said "fuck 'em"... Actually, I'd said "fuck 'em" a while earlier, this time was "fuck 'em and forget 'em".
(Although the writing was on the wall with that one, given how they wanted to do so much with their online system).
I'd like to try out Pathfinder (supposedly an indie 3.5), but can't FIND it in deadtree.

As for the GW shops...
I always get this weird, smiling cultist feeling whenever I've gone into one.
Also wondered how they stay running, and whether the employees apparent enthusiasm might be exploited a bit.
"Hey bob, wanna take a box of orcs home and paint 'em for the shop"?
Maybe every mini purchased helps subsidize the stores.

I've thought about getting back in to 40K, stuff like this story cools me back down again.
I'll keep my Warhammers with 2 PPCs and a SRM6.

Operating Systems

Google anounces Chrome OS 1

Submitted by MasterOfGoingFaster
MasterOfGoingFaster writes "And so it begins... Google announces a new OS based on their Chrome browser. Aimed at netbooks, Google aims to have the OS boot and have you on the net in "seconds". This will be an open source product, shipping with netbooks in 2010. Can you hear the blood vessels popping in Redmond?

"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html"

She's genuinely bogus.