Matchstick - Slashdot User

Tim Schafer Project Smashes Kickstarter Records-> 0

Submitted by Matchstick on Thursday February 09, @07:25AM

Matchstick writes "Tim Schafer, the veteran designer of classic adventure games like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, posted a $400,000 kickstarter project to fund a new adventure game and accompanying video documentary. In just over 8 hours the project reached its funding goal, smashing the previous Kickstarter record of $165,000 in 24 _hours_."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Tin Whiskers (Score 1) 445

by Matchstick on Monday December 19, @07:40PM (#38428300) Attached to: Hard Drive Makers Slash Warranties

I wouldn't be surprised if this were a side effect of Europes (not-so) recent Restriction of Hazardous Substances laws, which mean manufacturers need to use unleaded solder, which leads to tin whiskers.

The whiskers grow slowly and cause no harm, until they do cause harm (maybe a couple years down the line) -- and when they do, it is often catastrophic.

Comment: Summary is incorrect (Score 5, Informative) 420

by Matchstick on Friday October 14 2011, @05:30AM (#37711630) Attached to: Columbus Blamed For Mini Ice Age

It should say "the native depopulation and consequent re-forestation" rather than "native depopulation and deforestation". In current models, it doesn't make sense that deforestation leads to cooling.

Comment: Bad title (Score 1) 150

by Matchstick on Monday April 04 2011, @12:02AM (#35704880) Attached to: China Detects 10 Cases of Radiation Contamination, 2 In Hospital

The /. article title helps propagate the widespread popular confusion between radiation and radioactive materials. Radiation helps you detect contamination with radioactive materials, similar to how light helps you detect the sun. The editor should have stuck with either of the phrasings from the first link -- "10 cases of radiation" or "10 cases of radioactive contamination" -- rather than combine them.

StunRay Incapacitates with a Flash of Light 0

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday April 03 2011, @03:54PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Scientific American reports that a newly patented method of non-lethal incapacitation can render an assailant helpless for several minutes by overloading the neural networks connected to the retina with a brief flash of high-intensity light. “It’s the inverse of blindness—the technical term is a loss of contrast sensitivity,” says Todd Eisenberg, the engineer who invented the device. “The typical response is for the person to freeze. Law enforcement can easily walk up and apprehend [the suspect].” The device consists of a 75-watt lamp, combined with optics that collect and focus the visible light into a targeted beam, which can be aimed like a flashlight to project a controlled beam of white light more than 10 times more intense than an aircraft landing light with a range as far away as 150 feet. Recovery time ranges from “seconds to 20 minutes,” says Eisenberg. “It’s very analogous to walking from a very bright room into a very dark room.”"

36-Hour Lemmings Port Gets Sony Cease and Desist 268

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday June 30 2010, @03:33AM
from the found-a-cliff-real-quick dept.

Zerocool3001 writes "The recently featured 36-hour port of the original Palm version of Lemmings to the iPhone and Palm Pre has received a cease and desist letter from Sony. Only one day after submitting the app for approval on the two app stores, the developer has put up a post stating that he 'did this as a tribute to the game — we can only hope that Sony actually does a conversion for platforms like iPhone and Palm Pre in the near future.' The text of the cease and desist letter is available from the developer's website."

New LLVM Debugger Subproject Already Faster Than GDB 174

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 10 2010, @03:38PM
from the pop-will-eat-itself dept.

kthreadd writes "The LLVM project is now working on a debugger called LLDB that's already faster than GDB and could be a possible alternative in the future for C, C++, and Objective-C developers. With the ongoing success of Clang and other LLVM subprojects, are the days of GNU as the mainstream free and open development toolchain passé?" LLVM stands for Low Level Virtual Machine; Wikipedia as usual has a good explanation of the parent project.

Rock Band 3 To Include MIDI Keyboard 107

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday June 10 2010, @02:52PM
from the hey-guys-let's-get-some-of-that-innovation-in-here dept.

xbeefsupreme writes with news that Harmonix has officially demonstrated Rock Band 3's 25-key MIDI keyboard. From USA Today: "During the game, green, red, blue, yellow or orange keys flow on a 'stream' representing the notes to be played on five corresponding keyboard keys. In a new authentic Pro mode meant to help players segue to actual instruments, all 25 keys are used; the streams shifts left and right to cover the correct keys. The keyboard also works as a MIDI keyboard that can be connected to a computer. 'This is a real instrument and a real device,' says senior designer Sylvain Dubrofsky." The game will also support more advanced "real" guitar controllers, which have six actual strings you can strum. Hit the link below to see the keyboard in use.

The MPEG-LA's Lock On Culture 457

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 02 2010, @08:13AM
from the read-only-culture dept.

jrepin writes in to recommend a piece by Eugenia from OSNews, which explores the depths of the MPEG-LA's lock on video. One part of the problem is that almost all video cameras, including ones that cost more than $12,000, declare in their manuals that they are for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only. "We've all heard how the h.264 is rolled over on patents and royalties. Even with these facts, I kept supporting the best-performing 'delivery' codec in the market, which is h.264. 'Let the best win,' I kept thinking. But it wasn't until very recently when I was made aware that the problem is way deeper. No, my friends. It's not just a matter of just 'picking Theora' to export a video to Youtube and be clear of any litigation. MPEG-LA's trick runs way deeper!""

Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished By Fermi Telescope 95

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 03 2010, @12:23PM
from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.

eldavojohn writes "New observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the 'fog' of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies — as we previously hypothesized. For now, the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in 'here be') symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this, given Fermi's observations: 'Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.' And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space — like star formation and dark matter."