savio13 writes "Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of its Open Source Software Lab has invited 4 Mozilla developers to spend 4 days with Microsoft's Vista Readiness ISV team. The invite can be found on mozilla.dev.planning and was posted on Saturday (Aug. 19). Schroepfer replied by indicating that Microsoft and the Moz guys are already in contact via email and will follow up on the offer there. This is interesting because Sam posted the offer in a public forum (and indicated that he'd sent a PM, but was posting in case they had an @microsoft.com email filter). Sam also made a point of stating that the Vista ISV Readiness offer is typically only for commercial ISVs."

simoniker writes "Q Entertainment's Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of Rez and Lumines, has been discussing why he set up his own company as part of a wider Gamasutra interview, interesting because many major Japanese creators (such as Yuji Naka and Hironobu Sakaguchi) are leaving the big companies to form their own independent outfits. He explained: 'I don't know about everyone, but from just my case, I felt like I didn't have freedom. I was in Sega. At the time, I don't know now, but at the time, that was a big client for me, and I had a studio called UGA, United Game Artists. And I had seventy people. I had many visions, like to make casual games. Not big stuff, but small games. Not Lumines, but many other ideas. If I made a presentation to Sega executives about this kind of thing, and if they said no, that's over. That's it.'"

reporter writes "The New York Times has published a report providing further details about the release of private AOL search queries to the public. According to the report: 'Dr. Jensen, who said he had worked closely with Mr. Chowdhury on projects for AOL's search team, also said he had been told that the posting of the data had been approved by all appropriate executives at AOL, including Ms. [Maureen] Govern.' The report also identifies the other two people whom AOL management fired: they are Abdur Chowdhury and his immediate supervisor. Chowdhury is the employee who did the actual public distribution of the private search queries. He, apparently, has retained a lawyer."

sdmonroe writes "As the PS3 launch approaches, the first glimpses of the console's new interface have started to hit the web. The interface borrows many features from the PSP GUI which got such broad acclaim, and includes simple drop down menus for accessing important settings like video resolution, audio output, and management of your virtual friends. Customizability and configurability are also some of the features gamers can expect."

Ant writes "The Sci-Fi channel has announced that it will not be renewing its (very popular) original series Stargate SG-1 for another season.The spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis will get the nod, though, airing for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on August 18th, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television." Gateworld has further details: "New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis continue Fridays this summer starting at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, leading up to the mid-season finale on September 22. The second half of the season will begin in March, leading to SG-1's final bow on SCI FI in June."

eldavojohn writes "Recently, setting up prediction markets that people play was the big thing to guess the future. But is there a chance that computers will replace investors? From the article: 'Quantitative investment managers use a model to identify sets of characteristics for their investments. Computing power is now relatively cheap. Obviously, computing power can access data almost instantaneously and simultaneously. Asset classes and financial instruments within those asset classes can then be screened and investments are selected. They reflect the manager's views.'"

cmundhe writes "Mac entrepreneur Phill Ryu today launched My Dream App, a new American Idol-inspired online competition where contestants can win the chance to have their killer app idea realized by experienced Mac developers. Over forty industry luminaries, including Apple founder Steve Wozniak, have signed on to My Dream App as guest judges to help contestants hone their ideas."

BlueCup writes to tell us that even though some seem willing to let eBay's Chief Executive Meg Whitman slide on recent problems, many eBay sellers are calling for a change. From the article: "'EBay's core (auction) performance is suffering tremendously,' says Steve Grossberg, a longtime videogame seller on eBay. He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago. Adds Andy Mowery, an eBay seller of home and garden gear: 'It is time for new leadership at eBay.'"

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of Ark Linux 2006.1, which launched earlier this month. Overall, the reviewer likes this free KDE-based distro, but had to question some implementation choices, such as using the less-compatible Konqueror over Firefox for its default web browser. And for a distro that bills itself as 'a Linux distribution for everyone — designed to be easy to install and learn for users without prior Linux' the installation should hide command-line scrolling and be able to more automatically install standard graphics card drivers."

An anonymous reader writes "According to a story over at Nature, some geologists are ticked off at the International Astronomical Union for using the word 'pluton' to describe a round object orbiting the sun with a period more than 200 years. A pluton, it seems, is a common type of rock formation that exists in most Geology 101 curricula. IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."

olclops writes "It's a big day for astrophysics. After much speculation, scientists now have conclusive proof of dark matter. This result doesn't rule out alternate gravity theories like MOND, but it does mean those theories will have to account for exotic forms of dark matter."

BoredStiff writes "The Weekend Edition of NPR ran a story on Edward Tufte — the outspoken critic of PowerPoint presentations — he has been described by The New York Times as "The Leonardo da Vinci of Data." Since 1993, thousands have attended his day-long seminars on Information Design. Tufte's most recent book is filled with hundreds of illustrations that demonstrate one concept: good design is timeless, while bad design can be a matter of life and death."

BrewerDude writes "Reuters is reporting that AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has resigned from the company. Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?"

smooth wombat writes "As a follow-up to this long ago posting, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has passed a resolution requiring car manufacturers to inform buyers if their cars are equipped with Event Data Recorders (EDRs). The new regulation also standardizes what information is to be collected. Car manufacturers must comply with the new regulation beginning in the 2011 model year."

danny writes "Modern network devices have to handle traffic in huge volumes at low latencies; achieving this requires ideas and approaches from all of computer science: hardware, algorithms, protocols, software engineering and their integration in a discipline which Varghese calls "network algorithmics". Read the rest of Danny's review.