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Stupid imperialistic units. I have to divide every amount of feet by three to understand what they are meaning. Why can't you guys just follow the rest of the world?

I also think that Flight 93 was shot down,

That's right, keep the conspiracy flying.

I don't think the passengers had time to watch the news, call their families, and say goodbye.

Right. Because the recorded phone messages of flight attendants and some of the passengers are completely fabricated. The families made them up after the plane went down to gain sympathy.

I don't care about the shock collars, but for the love of god don't run the system on windows.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "When some North Carolina State students recently brought to the attention of the Court the apparent illegality of the RIAA's investigations by unlicensed investigators, they also caught the attention of the judges. After reading these new papers, District Judge Louise W. Flanagan, who admits that she's been routinely signing the RIAA's ex parte discovery orders in the past, has indicated that she is now going to take 'a fresh look' at the RIAA's tactics. She issued a stay of the subpoena, ordering NC State not to respond to it, and referred the motions to dismiss the cases to a Magistrate Judge for him to take that 'fresh look' at what has been going on."

Incarnate-VO writes "Multi-platform MMO developer Guild Software has announced integrated Voice Chat support in their 3D-Space title, Vendetta Online. The feature is built into all available clients, including Windows, MacOS X, Linux/32, and Linux/64, potentially making Vendetta Online the first MMO to offer integrated voice chat across such a broad base of platforms. More information is available from their recent newspost."

ratonu writes "A few months ago, Guild Software has quietly introduced an integrated voice chat feature as a beta feature in their MMORPG called Vendetta-Online. Guild mentioned at the time that the feature was developed together with an important technology partner.
Players feedback was quick and comprehensive, so the secret was revealed yesterday, July 1st, when TeamSpeak Systems GmbH, developer of cutting edge voice communication software and integrated solutions, and Guild Software Inc, independent game developer and creator of multiplayer virtual environments, announced the integration of TeamSpeak 3 voice communication software within Vendetta Online, a 3D space combat MMORPG for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms. Vendetta Online permits thousands of players to interact, and now communicate, in real-time as the pilots of spaceships in a vast universe.

"TeamSpeak Systems approached us recently, looking for a multiplatform integration testbed for their new product. They saw Vendetta Online as an ideal production test-case, as we are one of a small number of truly multiplatform titles in this genre. Our game is strictly native on each platform; we do not use wrapper libraries for portability, unlike most other MMOs," said John Bergman, CEO of Guild Software. "Our goal was to rapidly integrate TeamSpeak across all of our supported platforms: Windows, Linux/32bit, Linux/64bit, and universal Mac OS X. TeamSpeak delivered brilliantly on all counts."

This joint effort marks the first publicly released version of the highly anticipated TeamSpeak 3 SDK, TeamSpeak System's revolutionary, next-generation voice communication software, although TeamSpeak Systems is currently also working on other integration projects ranging from military simulators to financial institutions, as well as other online games and virtual worlds.

Additional features of Vendetta Online include the ability for large numbers of people to play together, at once, within a single persistent universe. Players take the form of spaceship pilots within the universe; trading, mining and fighting their way across a vast galaxy. All combat within the game is real-time, based entirely on "twitch" skill as opposed to "virtual dice rolling". Players may fight one another, fight NPCs, participate in groups, and even engage in large-scale battles between Nations. Newcomers are welcome to visit www.vendetta-online.com and sign up for a free trial account. Vendetta-Online was previously mentioned on slashdot here: MMORPG Vendetta Online Released"
http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=press&ident=20080701

BigLug writes with news that two experts in non-linear dynamics, Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, have developed an algebraic equation that describes the Möbius strip — something that, you may be surprised to learn, had never been done since the form's discovery in 1858. ABC.net.au has an accessible short summary: "What determines the strip's shape is its differing areas of 'energy density,' they say. 'Energy density' means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density."

An anonymous reader writes "David Maynor, infamous for the Apple Wi-Fi hack, has discovered bugs in the Windows version of Safari mere hours after it was released. He notes in the blog that his company does not report vulnerabilities to Apple. His claimed catch for 'an afternoon of idle futzing': 4 DoS bugs and 2 remote execution vulnerabilities." Separately, within 2 hours Thor Larholm found a URL protocol handler command injection vulnerability that allows remote command execution.

MsManhattan writes "High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) has unveiled a touch-screen mobile device that offers many of the same features as the iPhone but with an emphasis on business applications vs. entertainment value. The HTC Touch is based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 Professional OS and features a 2.8-inch touch screen offering access to emails, contacts and appointments. But unlike the iPhone, which will feature large internal flash memory capacity for music and movie storage, the HTC Touch offers a microSD drive, and a 1G-byte microSD card comes with the handset."

David Kesmodel from WSJ writes to let us know about an IBM breakthrough: a practical three-dimensional semiconductor chip that can be stacked on top of another electronic device in a vertical configuration. Chip makers have worked for years to develop ways to connect one type of chip to another vertically to reduce size and power use. The IBM technique of "through-silicon vias" offers a thousand-fold reduction in connector length and a hundred-fold increase in connector density. The new chips may appear in cellphones and other communication devices as soon as next year. PhysOrg has more details.

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Scott Finnie, Computerworld's Windows expert, has given the final verdict to Windows after 3 months of using a Mac. And the verdict is: "Sayonara." Finnie is known to readers here for his many reviews of Vista as it progressed to release. Quoting: "If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny."

An anonymous reader writes "According to a report MacScoop has obtained, Apple will charge current users of Mac OS X Tiger for the final version of Boot Camp that will be released at the same time as Mac OS X Leopard, this Spring."

The Hamilton Spectator is reporting that inventor Troy Hurtubise, creator of the "bear-protection suit" made famous by taking a hit from a moving vehicle, has slimmed down his design in hopes of landing a lucrative government contract. From the article: "He has spent two years and $15,000 in the lab out back of his house in North Bay, designing and building a practical, lightweight and affordable shell to stave off bullets, explosives, knives and clubs. He calls it the Trojan and describes it as the 'first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armour.'"

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

VE3OGG writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple may very well be developing an embedded version of OSX. The report details what they believe will be the next step in Apple's future, which is extending its consumer electronics division. The first child of such a marriage between OSX and consumer electronic may be the oft-rumoured, not-yet-materialized iPhone — which it also asserts may well be released next fiscal quarter. It seems to be their opinion that with both the desktop and the phone running operating systems with similar underpinnings, 'expansive opportunities' would emerge."