Alanceil - Slashdot User

Submission + - Nokia adopts Windows Phone 7 (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Friday February 11, 2011 @04:21AM

mikejuk writes: It is finally official.
Speculation that Nokia would abandon its own platforms and adopt either Android or Windows Phone 7 (WP7) have proved correct — they opted to go with WP7.
Nokia is putting its weight behind Microsoft's WP7 — does this mean we have two winners or just a bigger loser?

Game Prices — a Historical Perspective 225

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday October 07, 2010 @03:27AM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

The Opposable Thumbs blog scrutinizes the common wisdom that video games are too expensive, or that they're more expensive than they were in the past. They found that while in some cases the sticker price has increased, it generally hasn't outpaced inflation, making 2010 a cheaper time to be a gamer than the '80s and '90s. Quoting: "... we tracked down a press release putting the suggested retail price of both Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 at $69.99. [Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumer's Association] says that the N64 launch game pricing only tells you part of the story. 'Yes, some N64 games retailed for as high as $80, but it was also the high end of a 60 to 80 dollar range,' he told Ars. 'Retailers had more flexibility with pricing back then — though they've consistently maintained that the Suggested Retail Price was/is just a guide. Adjusted for inflation, we're generally paying less now than we have historically. But to be fair, DLC isn't factored in.' He also points out all the different ways that we can now access games: you can buy a game used, rent a game, or play certain online games for free. There are multiple ways to sell your old console games, and the competition in the market causes prices to fall quickly."

Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword 188

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @10:15AM from the x4-crit-modifier dept.

jamie writes "Fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett says he was so excited after being knighted by the Queen that he decided to make his own sword to equip himself for his new status... the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fueled with damp sheep manure."

Comment Re:It's all down to ridiculous password rules... (Score 1) 247

by Alanceil on Saturday August 08, 2009 @04:26PM (#28998089) Attached to: Poor Passwords A Worse Problem Than Poor Antivirus

May I suggest a Firefox addon as a remedy ?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/469 (Passwordmaker)

Like in TFA, I find it hard to make up many good passwords, so I'd rather use one strong one to create passwords that are unique for each login.

Submission + - HD DVD returns (zdnet.com)

Submitted by

Way2Random

on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:22PM

Way2Random writes: "Interesting article on HD-DVD getting another run. Just when Blu-ray thought it had clear sailing, a tempest has risen in the East: China Blue Hi-definition Disk (CBHD). Toshiba has licensed its HD DVD to them and it will be the unit world leader in HD optical technology in just 12 months. Why? The Times Online reports that the CBHD players are outselling Blu-ray in China by 3-1 and the CBHD disks cost a quarter of Blu-ray. http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=562&1=1"

Submission + - Apple censor's the dictionary. 1

Submitted by Ouchie on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @02:19PM

Ouchie writes: While I will admit I am not an Apple fan, their recent actions have not been persuasive in changing my mind any. It appears that beyond denying and attempting to cover up hazardous defects in their product lines they have now resorted to censoring a dictionary app.

"We were rejected for objectionable content. They provided screenshots of the words 'shit' and 'fuck' showing up in our dictionary's search results. What's interesting is that we spent a good deal of time making it so that you must type vulgar words in their entirety, and only then will we show you suggestions in the search results. For instance, if you type 'fuc', you will not see 'fuck' as a suggestion. This is in contrast to all other dictionaries we're aware of on the App Store (including Dictionary.com's application), which will show you 'fuck' in the search results for 'fuc', 'motherfucker' for 'mother', etc." http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/05/apples-new-low-censoring-a-dictionary/#continued

Submission + - OCZ's Colossus 1TB SSD Coming Soon

Submitted by eihab on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:58PM

eihab writes: OCZ has recently announced that it will introduce a new line of solid state drives (SSD) called the "Colossus" which will introduce massive storage capacities to the SSD world. Computer World reports that Colossus drives will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB priced at $300, $650, $1200 and $2200 respectively. The drives will sport the Indilinx controller and are expected to be released in the next couple of weeks.

Submission + - Britain wants to ban airbrushed images (nymag.com)

Submitted by

dougrun

on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:44PM

dougrun writes: "Britain is continuing its battle against Photoshop. Liberal Democrats are in an uproar over recent Oil of Olay ads featuring Twiggy with glowing, almost perfect skin. Amazing for a woman of her age. But then photos of the model shopping at Marks & Spencer surfaced, and she looked — dare we say it — her own age, with actual wrinkles and jowls, making the image in the ad seem downright silly. Lawmakers are getting their brows furrowed worrying over what effect this could have on young girls."

Submission + - Critical Windows 7 Bug May Hinder Launch (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by Glenn2372 on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @01:18PM

Glenn2372 writes: According to Randall C. Kennedy of Infoworld, multiple sources have confirmed that RTM build 7600.16385 includes a potentially fatal bug that could crash the OS in a matter of seconds. The bug is a massive memory leak involving the chkdsk.exe utility when run against a secondary hard disk using the "/r" parameter. Whether this is an actual showstopper that halts the August 6th release for MSDN or the October 22nd commercial release is unclear, but this definitely doesn't bode well for the boys at Microsoft.

Submission + - DIY CPU thermal grease - using diamond dust! (inventgeek.com)

Submitted by

tygerstripes

on Wednesday August 05, 2009 @06:35AM

tygerstripes writes: "The dysfunctor has spotted an impressive project over on InventGeek.com; an innovative chap has developed his own thermal compound for improved CPU cooling, using diamond dust — the best available material for thermal conduction — as the key ingredient.

In spite of the quick-&-dirty DIY nature of the project, the gains in cooling performance are remarkable, especially considering the material cost was only $33. Given the price many enthusiasts will pay for a top-end cooler, it's easy to imagine this product coming to market quite soon."

Comment Re:Much as we hate TPM here on /. (Score 1) 192

by Alanceil on Saturday August 01, 2009 @08:23PM (#28913085) Attached to: Bootkit Bypasses TrueCrypt Encryption

Why not use a shellscript at boot-time for this ?
Something along the lines of "dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 2> /dev/null | sha1sum",
it should be enough to check for differences in output.

Submission + - AT&T Censors 4chan server 13

Submitted by on Sunday July 26, 2009 @06:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/94pf2/att_is_now_blocking_all_access_to_img4chanorg/ Details how img.4chan.org (home of the notorious /b/ — "Random" image board) is being actively blocked by AT&T. According to the scant details available on 4chan and Reddit there are reports that img.4chan.org has become inaccessible from California to Texas and some reports claim as far east as Connecticut. Supposedly this is to stop a ring of pedophiles, but as one Reddit poster said it best "First the came for the pedophiles and I was not a pedophile..."
Disturbing news indeed.

Submission + - AT&T blocks img.4chan.org from customers (reddit.com) 11

Submitted by

bmecoli

on Sunday July 26, 2009 @03:40PM

bmecoli writes: "AT&T seems to be blocking img.4chan.net which hosts the infamous /b/ (random) board, as well as /r9k/. Those who have contacted AT&T representatives were told that the site is in fact blocked, so this isn't a technical problem, and all the other 4chan subdomains work fine."

First Light Images From Herschel Satellite Released 35

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday June 20, 2009 @09:47AM from the pretty-pictures dept.

davecl writes "The first images from the Herschel satellite have been released by ESA. The images are of the galaxy M51 and show a lot of structure and other features never seen before. Coverage of these results can be found on the ESA website and on the Herschel mission blog. There's a lot of work still to be done on tuning the satellite and instruments for optimum performance, but these very early results already show the promise of this mission. I work on this project and can say that these results are really impressive at this early stage!"

Submission + - Microsoft Sabotaging Firefox With Sneaky Add-Ons 4

Submitted by Slashdot on Saturday May 30, 2009 @09:09PM

Slashdot writes: The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, unleashed in February, forces an undisclosed Firefox extension on Windows users, which not only injects a serious security vulnerability into Firefox (also present in Internet Explorer), but it disables the uninstall button, meaning the only way to get rid of it, is to edit the Windows registry.

**you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste**

http://startupearth.com/2009/05/31/microsoft-sabotaging-firefox-with-sneaky-net-updates/

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