EchoD - Slashdot User

Infinity Ward Lead Developers Axed Unexpectedly 276

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 02 2010, @01:26PM
from the let's-blame-the-dedicated-server-fiasco dept.

RogueyWon writes "Kotaku is reporting that Infinity Ward, the development studio behind Modern Warfare 2, has been at the center of strange events recently. Jason West and Vince Zampella, two lead developers, have been fired by parent company Activision for 'breaches of contract and insubordination.' Speculation is rife as to the reasons behind this; following Modern Warfare 2's spectacular sales figures, it seems unlikely that the studio's performance could be to blame."

Federal Judge Orders Schools To Stop Laptop Spying 359

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 23 2010, @07:03PM
from the black-electrical-tape dept.

CWmike writes "A federal judge on Monday ordered the Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on its students to stop activating the cameras in school-issued MacBook laptops. According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of 'improper behavior in his home' and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence. In an appearance on network television last Saturday, Robbins said he was accused by the assistant principal of selling drugs and taking pills — but he claimed the pictures taken by his computer's camera showed him eating candy. Also on Monday, the company selling the software used by the school district to allegedly spy on its students blasted what it called laptop theft-recovery 'vigilantism.'" jamie found two posts from stryde.hax pointing out suggestive information about one school district network administrator, and coaching students how to determine if their school-issued laptops were infected with the LANRev software used to operate the cameras remotely and in secret.

Gates and MS Don't See Eye-To-Eye On CO2 288

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 23 2010, @05:52PM
from the forest-and-trees dept.

Sam Machkovech writes "Bill Gates's speech at last week's TED Conference centered on 'moving to zero-carbon energy, and our need to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.' His choice of subject was an abrupt turn from The Gates Foundation's typical humanitarian topics, but he insisted that energy innovation is crucial to his Foundation's goals. A move by Microsoft today proves that Gates's old company has less interest in that carbon-neutral goal — Microsoft has begun campaigning against a bridge redesign that would result in more bus and transit options for commuters between Seattle and the company's homebase of Redmond, WA."

Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine 389

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 02 2009, @07:34PM
from the now-what-did-we-say-about-playground-behavior? dept.

BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."

Comment: Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side. (Score 1) 1224

by EchoD on Tuesday October 07 2008, @07:41AM (#25283827) Attached to: Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents

If you can't get out of the way with traction, doing 80, you probably shouldn't be driving. You know, considering that most roads in the US are posted at 65 or lower.
See the chart.

Getting the Most from Large Monitors 3

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday April 16 2008, @11:39AM

Anonymous Coward writes "A recent study (sponsored by NEC) has confirmed that large monitors can increase productivity up to 52% on certain types of tasks, but the productivity falls off when you get above 24 inches. The ability to watch a DVD while working might be partially to blame, but there is a bigger issue. Once you get over about 24 inches, the habits developed on smaller monitors no longer work. To work effectively with a large monitor you have to break habits formed from years of using smaller displays."

Firefox Logo Spied In Deep Space 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2008, @08:33AM

An anonymous reader writes "Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is an image of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. The photo was taken way back in March 2004 and if you rotate the photo a bit, the star resembles the Firefox logo very much!"

Slashdot Most Overrated Blog According to TIME-> 16

Submitted by

Amit Agarwal

on Monday April 07 2008, @02:11PM

Amit Agarwal writes "In their annual list of Top 25 blogs, the TIME magazine has added Slashdot to the category of most overrated blogs. The review says — Reading Slashdot these days is like visiting the IT guy at work. He's infuriatingly smug and cares passionately about stuff you don't care about, and views your lack of interest as further confirmation of his intellectual superiority."
Link to Original Source

Microsoft misleads with "green" marketing-> 0

Submitted by jcatcw on Wednesday March 26 2008, @09:37AM

jcatcw writes "Microsoft has launched a 'Get green, Stay green' marketing program that may convince people that it has something to do with helping save the environment. According to Preston Gralla, nothing can be further from the truth. It's a marketing campaign to get people to buy the Windows Live OneCare protection suite."
Link to Original Source

Rubik's cube proof cut to 25 moves-> 0

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Wednesday March 26 2008, @06:22AM

KentuckyFC writes "A scrambled Rubik's cube can be solved in just 25 moves, regardless of the starting configuration. Tomas Rosicki, a Stanford-trained mathematician, has proven the new limit (down from 26 which was proved last year) using a neat piece of computer science. Rather than study individual moves, he's used the symmetry of the cube to study its transformations in sets. This allows him to separate the "cube space" into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored (abstract on the physics arxiv). Even then, to crunch through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz. Next up, 24 moves."
Link to Original Source