TheDopp - Slashdot User

Valve Declares Steamworks Makes DRM Obsolete 0

Submitted by Dr. Eggman on Tuesday March 24 2009, @01:25PM

Dr. Eggman writes "Valve has announced the availability of a complete suite of publishing and development tools in a new set of advanced features delivered in Steamworks, available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide. Part of the new Steamworks suite, the Custom Executable Generation (CEG) technology, compliments already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks. A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

New support for in-game downloadable Content(free or paid,) and matchmaking through a robust lobby system, shipped and tested in Left 4 Dead.

The Steamworks services are offered free of charge to developers and publishers around the world. In addition to the services added in this extension, Steamworks offers support for Steam Achievements, Steam Community, Auto Updating, Statistics, Steam Cloud and more. The Steamworks service is also fully integrated with Steam, but games using the Steamworks API do not have to use the Steam delivery platform."

mp3HD: New lossless MP3 format explained-> 0

Submitted by

CNETNate

on Tuesday March 24 2009, @01:07PM

CNETNate writes "Thomson, the company that licenses the MP3 patent, has released a new lossless MP3 format called mp3HD. It utilises both lossless and lossy audio contained inside a single .mp3 file, and the files will play on all existing MP3 players. The idea is simple: lossless files on your desktop that can be transferred without conversion to iPods and MP3 players. The issue, it transpires, is that although the full lossless/lossy hybrid MP3 file is transferred to players, only the lossy element can be played back. A command line encoder can be found on Thomson's Web site."
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Strip-search case tests limits of 4th amendment-> 0

Submitted by langelgjm on Tuesday March 24 2009, @12:05PM

langelgjm writes "The Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students' free speech at school sponsored events that take place off school property. While the school described the strip-search as "not excessively intrusive in light of Redding's age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction", the Supreme Court's last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student's purse. Incidentally, the girl was not found in possession of any drugs, legal or otherwise."
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Apple's 90 day App Store refund rumour confirmed-> 0

Submitted by

Spanner Spencer

on Tuesday March 24 2009, @11:47AM

Spanner Spencer writes "After the Android Market received attention for offering a 24 hour no quibbles refund on its software, it came to attention that Apple's new developer contract offers a similar refund policy — only this one stretches out to 90 days and the developer is expected to foot the bill for Apple's 30 per cent commission on top of any refunds. After some digging, Pocket Gamer uncovered the offending passage in the new contract to confirm the rumor is true. It also discovered this passage has actually always been in Apple's developer contract, and should any kind of sizeable refund occur, developers easily could find themselves in debt."
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Comment: Re:Video (Score 4, Funny) 252

by TheDopp on Thursday March 19 2009, @02:11PM (#27259995) Attached to: Battlestar Galactica Hosted At the UN

I'm fairly certain the use of RealMedia by the UN is proof they ignore human rights vi*BUFFERING*olations.

On-Grid Energy Storage Using Ice 0

Submitted by

lotho brandybuck

on Thursday March 19 2009, @01:20PM

lotho brandybuck writes "Tuesday I went up to Seattle to browse thru the IEEE Power Systems Conference and Expo.

Energy storage is needed for electrical grid peak loads. There's been a lot of pie in sky stuff out there... flywheels, fuel-cells, battery banks.

It was nice to see someone with a real solution. Ice Energy does HVAC units that freeze water at night, then uses this as an energy sink during the peak electrical load. hours. This works so well because they're taking advantage of the heat-of-fusion (energy needed to melt) of water. A very non-BS thing. In fact, the definition of a ton of HVAC came from the ability to freeze a ton of water in 24 hours.

They had a little booth there with a unit that was slowly melting a 7000lbs tank of ice.. running a little multi-split, keeping their booth-guy a little cooler and a little happier than the other booth people at the show."

Battlestar Galactica hosted at the UN-> 0

Submitted by TheDopp on Thursday March 19 2009, @01:06PM

TheDopp writes "The United Nations hosted the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica Tuesday evening in New York. Clips of the show were shown as discussion points during the event, touching on the morality of Suicide Bombers in war, Abortion and the use of torture on enemies of the state. At one point during the event an attendee mentions "the "Old Man" launched into a passionate speech about casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant, and said we were one race, the human race. His voice echoed throughout the chamber growing louder until — I kid you not — he was yelling, "So Say We All," and the crowd answered right back. Hell, even I yelled it, I was in the fraking United Nations with Adama, the gods themselves could not have stopped this moment." The full video of the event is located on the UN website here."
Link to Original Source

UN Hosts Battlestar Galactica-> 1

Submitted by Dopp on Thursday March 19 2009, @11:56AM

Dopp writes "The United Nations hosted the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica Tuesday evening in New York. During the event clips of the show were shown as discussion points, including the desicion to outlaw abortion and the use of suicide bombers on New Caprica. At one point in the event, Edward James Olmos Olmos "got a little heated. 'You never should've invited me here,' he said, before blasting the UN for continuing to use race as a term of separation, of division among peoples. His voice rose, steadily, as if years of social activism was coming to a head on this night. Then, directing his attention to the high schoolers: 'Adults will never be able to stop using the word 'race' as a cultural determinant....There is only one race: the human race. SO SAY WE ALL!' I swear to you, everyone in that chamber shouted it right back at him. Because the Admiral asked us to. " You can watch the full video (unfortunately it's a .rm file) here."
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Nintendo to take on Apple with DSi app store -> 0

Submitted by Dave Allen on Thursday March 19 2009, @10:46AM

Dave Allen writes "Despite Nintendo publically claiming no direct competition with the iPhone or iPod Touch with its new DSi console, reports have been leaked about the Big N actively encouraging developers to begin work on small form gaming and non-gaming applications for the DSi's download service. This is the first step toward Nintendo putting together a direct App Store rival, and could be the marketing hook it's been desperately searching for to convince gamers to upgrade their DS."
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