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Comment: Re:Why is this a big deal? (Score 3, Informative) 49

by shadow42 (#28288869) Attached to: Yahoo Releases Open Source Hadoop Distribution
As far as I can tell, the distribution Yahoo is offering is just the vanilla Hadoop, but with Yahoo's patches on top of it. Yahoo is very involved in Hadoop's development (the project's founder is now employed by them), so a lot of their patches get incorporated back into Hadoop's source tree. Most of the changes Yahoo made are just performance/stability patches that haven't been incorporated into an official release yet. You could probably get the same distribution just by grabbing SVN trunk.
Cellphones

What The Banned iPhone Ad Should Really Look Like 463

Posted by samzenpus
from the truth-in-advertising dept.
Barence writes "To demonstrate just how misleading the latest (and now banned) iPhone television ad really is, PC Pro has recreated it using an iPhone 3G and a Wi-Fi connection — with laughable results. Apple was forced to pull the advert today after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided it exaggerated the speed of mobile browsing. 'In the 30-second clip the iPhone is shown loading a webpage, finding its current location in Google Maps, opening a PDF from an email and finally taking a phone call. The ASA concluded that the iPhone cannot do what was shown in the mere 29 seconds afforded in the advert, ruling that it was misleading.' Try it for yourself and you'll undoubtedly agree."
NASA

Urine Passes NASA Taste Test 404

Posted by kdawson
from the not-mine dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "Astronauts flying aboard space shuttle Endeavour are delivering a device to the International Space Station that may leave you wondering if NASA is taking recycling too far. Among the ship's cargo is a water regeneration system that distills, filters, ionizes, and oxidizes wastewater — including urine — into fresh water for drinking or, as one astronaut puts it, 'will make yesterday's coffee into today's coffee.' The US space agency spent $250M for the water recycling equipment but with the space shuttles due to retire in two years, NASA needed to make sure the station crew would have a good supply of fresh water. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. In space, there's an additional challenge: steam doesn't rise, so the entire distillation system is spun to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine. The water has been thoroughly tested on Earth, including blind taste tests that pitted recycled urine with similarly treated tap water. 'Some people may think it's downright disgusting, but if it's done correctly, you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth,' said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper."
The Courts

French Record Labels Go After Limewire, SourceForge 326

Posted by kdawson
from the lawyers-on-airplanes dept.
An anonymous reader notes that TorrentFreak is reporting: "French record labels have received the green light to sue four US-based companies that develop P2P applications, including the BitTorrent client Vuze, Limewire, and Morpheus. Shareaza is the fourth application, for which the labels are going after the open source development platform SourceForge. ... Putting aside the discussion on the responsibilities of application developers for their users activities, the decision to go after SourceForge for hosting a application that can potentially infringe, is stretching credibility beyond all bounds." SourceForge is Slashdot's corporate parent.

Comment: Re:a fun bit of trivia (Score 5, Informative) 637

by shadow42 (#25754941) Attached to: The Trap Set By the FBI For Half Life 2 Hacker
From the talk page of a Valve developer on their developer wiki:

When we were getting very close to releasing Half-Life 1 (less than a week or so), we found there were already some projects that we needed to start working on, but we couldn't risk checking in code to the shipping version of the game. At that point we forked off the code in VSS to be both $/Goldsrc and /$Src. Over the next few years, we used these terms internally as "Goldsource" and "Source". At least initially, the Goldsrc branch of code referred to the codebase that was currently released, and Src referred to the next set of more risky technology that we were working on. When it came down to show Half-Life 2 for the first time at E3, it was part of our internal communication to refer to the "Source" engine vs. the "Goldsource" engine, and the name stuck.

Games

Early Reviews Reflect Well On Mirror's Edge 73

Posted by Soulskill
from the faith-is-rewarded dept.
The much-anticipated first person non-shooter Mirror's Edge is being released today for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Reviews for the game, while not without complaints, are generally positive. 1Up praises the controls, saying, "It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. ... Once you're familiar with Faith's abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it's easy to see potential routes through the world." Ars Technica is more critical, noting that the main story's gameplay only clocks in at about six hours, and that the artistic style doesn't vary much between levels. Nick Channon, a producer for Mirror's Edge, sat down with Gamasutra and discussed the reasoning for some of their design choices. The PC version of Mirror's Edge and some additional downloadable content will be available in January.
Censorship

Thailand Blocks Anti-Royal Websites 169

Posted by timothy
from the should-internet-take-the-definite-article? dept.
societyofrobots writes "'The Thai government says it is planning to build an Internet firewall to block websites deemed insulting to the country's hugely popular royal family.' In the past, Thailand has blocked YouTube because of a video that criticized the King. While, locally served websites that criticize the king are forcefully taken down, this new law will attack external sites."
PC Games (Games)

99.8% of Gamers Don't Care About DRM, Says EA 554

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the they-also-don't-understand-it dept.
arcticstoat writes "If you thought that EA might have been humbled by the massive Internet backlash against its use of SecuROM in its recent games, then you'd be wrong. Speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, EA's CEO John Riccitiello claimed that the whole issue had been blown out of all proportion. 'We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,' claimed Riccitiello, 'but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.'"
Censorship

Debunking the Google Earth Censorship Myth 294

Posted by timothy
from the just-what-they-want-you-to-think dept.
waderoush writes "There's a persistent Web meme to the effect that Google obscures sensitive or top-secret locations in Google Maps and Google Earth at the insistence of national governments. A July IT Security article promoted on Digg, 'Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps,' revived this notion. But the article has been widely criticized, and I did some fact-checking this week on the six Boston-area locations mentioned in the IT Security list. As it turns out, not one of the allegedly blurred locations has degraded imagery in Google Maps, as my screen shots demonstrate. My post looks into the sources of the misleading IT Security piece, and of other mistaken rumors about Google Maps."
The Courts

Jack Thompson Disbarred 522

Posted by timothy
from the it-burns-it-burns dept.
Sockatume writes "The Florida Supreme Court has approved Judge Dava Tunis' recommendations for the permanent disbarment of John B. "Jack" Thompson, with no leave to reapply and $43,675.35 in disciplinary costs. The ruling is a step up from the enhanced disbarment that had been suggested by the prosecution, which would have forbidden him from reapplying for ten years. Thompson has 30 days to appeal the ruling before the disbarment is permanent. Thompson responds to the ruling."
It's funny. Laugh.

Google News Has Russian Army Invading Savannah, GA 413

Posted by timothy
from the sounds-like-an-eddie-izzard-sketch dept.
theodp writes "If you checked out Google-wannabe Cuil, you learned that mapping search results to relevant images isn't a trivial task. But even Big Dog Google isn't immune to embarrassing graphics gaffes. Readers of Google News were shown that Russian troops are thrusting into the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, thanks to the Google Maps graphic accompanying a story about Russian incursions into Georgia — the nation-state in the Caucasus, not the Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern US. Yahoo! Answers also had some fun with the GA-Georgia mix-up — 'I live in georegia but i dont see rusia no where not even sound but they says theres tanks should i be worrie' (Google cache) — before a spoilsport deleted the question."
The Military

Air Force Looks To Laser-Proof Its Weapons 347

Posted by samzenpus
from the have-you-ever-heard-of-a-mirror dept.
slugo writes "This wired.com article has probably the coolest laser destruction video you have ever seen. The video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems. The US Air Force is starting to look for ways to laser-proof its bombs and missiles — with spray-on coatings, no less. They think everyone is going to figure this laser thing out sometime and need a defense against what they are already very good at — shooting things out of the sky with a laser."

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"

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