Comment Re:Hotels (Score 1) 539
That's exactly what I was thinking. If, as the OP says, "Most of the TVs in the town have digital tuners," then why screw around with boxes at all?
Stand-Alone Antivirus Software? 159
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that repairs specialty devices that have an embedded Mini-ATX motherboard without a CD-ROM drive and run Windows XP Home. And while the USB flash drives we insert into them have a physical write-protect tab, we still encounter a (rather annoying) display dialog from malware/viruses to remove the write-protect so the malware can infect the flash drive. We don't remove the write-protect, obviously, but would like to offer our customers the option of removing the malware/virus without having to install any software. We would rather not install/uninstall antivirus software even for one-time use, due to various licensing issues, nor do we want to connect to the Internet to use web-based online scanners. Is there any stand-alone anti-virus/anti-malware software for Windows that can be run directly from the write-protected flash drive itself?"
Best Places To Work In IT 2010 205
CWmike writes "These top-rated IT workplaces combine choice benefits with hot technologies and on-target training. Computerworld's 17th annual report highlights the employers firing on all cylinders. The Employer Scorecard ranks IT firms based on best benefits, retention, training, diversity, and career development. Also read what IT staffs have to say about job satisfaction. How's your workplace, IT folk?" Read below for a quick look at the top 10 IT workplaces according to this survey.
Comment Re:This is why I'll never own anything apple. (Score 1) 423
A couple more "can'ts" that are the reasons I've got a Blackberry for a work phone when we had the option to get iPhones:
1. No ability to change the New Mail notification sound without jailbreaking.
2. No ability to set up alerting rules for email. If one of my servers goes down at 3 am, I need to be woken up to fix it. If Dell sends me spam, I don't. Yeah, there are apps, but they involved, at least a couple months ago, forwarding your email to an outside server and then having it come back into the app. That won't fly for business.
3. Zero support for importance flags in email. Maybe this is an MS-only, non-RFC thing. I'm not sure. But if business adoption is desired this is a pretty widespread piece of functionality to ignore.
If I'm wrong and there's some buried functionality to do this (without jailbreaking/warranty voiding) that Slashdot will flame me for not finding, great. You'll have made the IT dept of a smallish company very happy.
Aussie Attorney General Says Gamers Are Scarier Than Biker Gangs 409
Sasayaki writes "South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson claims, in an interview with Good Game, that gamers were more of a threat to his family than biker gangs. This is the man who has been the biggest opponent to Australia receiving an R18+ rating for video games and who has the power to veto any such law introducing it."
Sun's Project Darkstar Game Server Platform No More 82
sproketboy writes "Project Darkstar, an open source software platform from Sun labs that simplifies the development of horizontally scalable servers for online games, is being discontinued as of the Oracle acquisition. This project, mentioned a couple of years back on Slashdot, was a unique concept for building an application server specific to on-line gaming. Sadly they were so close at version 0.9.11 (which is still very stable). Hopefully the open source community can get involved and help continue work on this project."
Comment I tried to buy it, but... (Score 1) 164
Target had none.
Kmart had none.
Walmart had none.
Blockbuster had boxes on the "Buy this stuff" shelf. I picked one up, went to the counter, and told the clerk I'd like to buy it. She looked behind the counter for a while, then went to the back. Returning, she placed the empty box back on the "Buy this stuff" shelf and said "Sorry, we don't have any of these."
Lack of immediate gratification seriously made me consider dusting off my pegleg and eyepatch.
Comment Re:A common annoyance, not just in gaming (Score 1) 349
Just these days?
This stuff really brings back memories of clearing out TSRs to run games in the early 90's. Tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to clear out that last few k of memory so Doom would run.
This is not new. Fewer people care at this point because resources are not as scarce, but companies have been doing this for a very long time.
Comment Re:Beer cans? (Score 1) 168
As I'm not up on my Slashdot measurement schemes at the moment, can you provide a beer-kegs to libraries-of-congress conversion?
If the result could be in furlongs per hogshead, that would be great.
Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope
the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new
Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under
disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source
projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."
Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting:
"EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Comment Apropos naming. (Score 1) 506
So an arguably justifiable lawsuit is brought about by someone whose name is "Isa Dick"?
Anyone surprised?
Anyone surprised?
Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173
drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students."
While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?
Comment Re:Mathematics != human preference (Score 1) 174
Not immediately following in the lyrics, but apropos none the less re: music - I asked how much you pay for this she said nothin' man it's stolen.
Comment Re:The best way to use windows ... (Score 1) 830
Search the parent folder for *.xml, then drag from the search results window to the desired folder. Done. Not mv */*.xml but pretty quick.
