daria42 writes "A project to port Sun Microsystems' Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) tool to FreeBSD appears to have achieved some initial success. DTrace was open sourced last year and is one of the coolest features in Solaris 10."

daria42 writes "According to Ubuntu's official release schedule, the next version of its Linux distribution, code-named "Dapper Drake" is due to be released this week, June 1 to be precise. This landmark release will be supported for 5 years (previous versions were only supported for 18 months) and is being touted as ready for enterprise use." From the article: "Dapper Drake will be supported for three years for the desktop version and five years for servers, compared to 18 months for the current 5.10 'Breezy Badger' version. The code release will come after the development process was extended by six weeks in order to improve the reliability of the software."

ItsIllak writes "Alternate Reality Games [ARGs] have been bubbling under for the past 10 years now. Usually completely homebrew or attached to big budget productions, they have been used to create buzz around a game, product or movie. Perplex City have bucked that trend. Their ARG is completely independent of anything else, its entirely self contained. With fresh ideas on income generation and a $200,000 top prize to whomever finds the real life buried treasure - is this the future of an entirely new form of entertainment?"

An anonymous reader writes "Australian scientists have discovered, after a decade of tests, a new way to enrich uranium for use in power plants." From the article: "There are at present only two methods for sifting uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix. One, called diffusion, involves forcing uranium through filters. Being lighter, U-235 passes through more easily and is thus separated from its heavier counterpart. The second method, widely adopted in the 1970s, uses centrifuges to spin the heavier and lighter atoms apart. Both, said Dr Goldsworthy, are 'very crude. You have to repeat the process over and over,' consuming enormous amounts of electricity. The spinning method requires 'thousands and thousands of centrifuges'."

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has an article up discussing comments by Oracle's Chief Security Officer railing against the culture of patching that exists in the software industry." From the article: "Things are so bad in the software business that it has become 'a national security issue,' with regulation of the industry currently on the agenda, she said. 'I did an informal poll recently of chief security officers on the CSO Council, and a lot of them said they really thought the industry should be regulated,' she said, referring to the security think tank."

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on a new technique that may allow Oxygen to be wrung from the soil on the moon. This may pave the way for a moonbase, and allow permanent habitation on Earth's only natural satellite." From the article: "Lunar soil brought back to Earth is in short supply and highly prized, so Nasa researchers have been using matter with the same composition for its tests. The soil contains about 45 per cent oxygen by weight, but it is mostly 'trapped' in the form of silicon dioxide ... At the moment, all oxygen supplies would have to be brought from Earth, which is so expensive and energy-inefficient that it effectively rules out a permanent Moon base. "

An anonymous reader writes to mention a ZDNet post about another possible product in the grand Google vision. The product, Google Checkout, may be an attempt to go after PayPal. From the article: "Since we know Google is behind its registration, what is Google Checkout going to be? I think it will be a shopping cart system to help websites accept payment for their items online. The money site owners make will be deposited into a holding account at Google -- just like AdSense works. Isn't this starting to sound a lot like PayPal? Who knows, they could even offer a Google branded Mastercard "debit card" like PayPal's ATM/Debit Card -- after all, the domain googlemastercard.com is registered to Google too."

An anonymous reader writes "Just a few days after it was discovered, Symantec has posted a fix to a critical flaw with its Antivirus software." From the article: "The eEye digital security firm reported the problem initially, and discovered it was present in the newest versions of the affected Symantec products. Further research noted by Symantec described the problem as a flaw that made the products vulnerable to a stack overflow. Once exploited, that overflow could have permitted an attacker to execute code on the machine, with System level rights. The issue was made worse by being one that impacted enterprise-level customers, big spenders that purchase hundreds or thousands of licenses depending on the size of the business. "

Gamasutra has another in its series of articles about games from Schadenfreude Interactive. The highly unusual developer has gained acclaim for its Cthulu Karts title, and the Gamasutra site looks at what it was like getting mega-star David Hasselhoff to do voice work for their game. From the article: "When we heard Mr. Hasselhoff would be in nearby Frankfurt for an appearance, we jumped at the chance to have him record a few lines. Crispin was somehow able to get Mr. Hasselhoff's agent to agree. How he was able to explain what Cthulhu were, and why they were racing karts, I do not know (I will tell you, though --Cthulhu are a race of hideous godlike trans-dimensional monsters created by author H.P. Lovecraft. They are racing karts because, well, karting games were popular at the time)."

An anonymous reader writes "In an interesting move, Nokia has decided to kill off the N-Gage hardware but carry on with the N-Gage name; a name branded as a failure by most of the gaming media. Still, Nokia has announced they'll be re-introducing the N-Gage as a gaming service for the Nokia network. You'll be able to download games that are very reminiscent of the N-Gage from their online service. This actually fits well into Nokia's statements when they announced the death of the N-Gage hardware. They said they would be focusing on their cell phones as a gaming platform in general, instead of just one or two."

Via 1up and Kotaku, news from the most recent Bungie weekly update. Work on Halo 2 PC is continuing apace, but players looking forward to the game should know a few things. The game looks to be Vista only and, despite the promise of the 'Live Anywhere' concept, will not be interconnected in the way that the Shadowrun game will be. The Bungie update clarifies on these announcements. From the article: "Will I need a DirectX 10 graphics card to run Halo 2 on PC? No. Although you will require Windows Vista to play Halo 2 on a PC, you won't necessarily need to upgrade your graphics card to do it. Halo 2, like some other Vista titles, will work just fine on a wide range of graphics cards, including DX9 cards. We will provide far more detailed minimum hardware requirements closer to the game's completion."

Joystiq has up an interesting article today, gathering together information from a couple of places to discuss why the PlayStation 3 is so expensive. From the article: "Kutaragi was demoted after being passed over for the role of CEO and, when former Sony Pictures head Howard Stringer assumed the position, the relationship between the content and technology divisions of Sony became even more intimate. Stringer "quickly dubbed the PlayStation 3 as one of the company's 'champion' products." Kutaragi's desire to stratify the console market with Cell technology in effect wed Sony to the unpalatable prospect of charging an unprecedented price. Coupled with Sony's desire to not only push their own content on HD discs, but to control that medium with their proprietary Blu-ray format, the final price was escalated by two very advanced (and very expensive) pieces of Sony technology."

GameDaily reports on the first major Xbox Live update since the launch of the Xbox 360. From the article: "The forthcoming update will bring with it a number of additions designed to enhance the user experience, with perhaps the most notable function being the download manager. Currently, when downloading demos, trailers or other items from Marketplace users are tied to the download screen. The update will enable users to queue up and prioritize up to six downloads and users will be allowed to play music, games or do other things on the dashboard while downloads are in progress. If an online game is started, the current download in progress will be paused so as to avoid lag." For the visual among us, Joystiq has a number of screenshots showing off some of the new features.

Slate is running an article on why indie games are still such small potatoes in today's game industry. From the article: "In today's movie business, it's possible for an indie film like Napoleon Dynamite to become a sensation. Saw, which cost a mere $1.2 million, grossed 100 times that amount. That just doesn't happen in video games. The average PlayStation 2 game costs about $8 million. Studios often need large development teams--usually 40 or more people--to meet their tight deadlines. They spend money to license everything from comic book heroes to graphics engines. They record A-list actors. And if they burn their own CDs or do their own marketing, costs can really soar."

Right on the heels of the announcement of a new infinite dungeons module, via Broken Toys comes word that Atari has completely pulled support from the first Neverwinter Nights game. From the article: "There hasn't been any official word on all this yet but some of the most credible factors, that have been thrown around, include; the financial stability of Atari, and that they didn't want horses for NWN1 to come out officially before NWN2. This also appears to have affected other premium modules that were in production with other teams and there is probably no chance that Witches Wake 2 will ever get produced. It's hard to expect a publisher like Atari to keep on supporting patches forever, and in fact most games are lucky if they can get a few done. The NWN community has been very lucky to have had so many patches with so much free content. We shouldn't lose sight of that. However killing the premium module program makes no sense."