Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games

The Dark Side of Making L.A. Noire 242

Posted by Soulskill from the games-are-serious-business dept.
JameskPratt writes "Long-time readers have no illusions of how awful the video game industry can treat its workers. Eleven ex-employee of Team Bondi, who made LA Noire, have now cited 60- to 110-hour work weeks, unusual compensation rules, and the 7-year development cycle as reasons for frustration and discontent. They claim their boss, Brendan McNamara, crushed office morale with verbal abuse and unreasonable goals. As the saying goes, the two things you don't want to see being made are law and video games." The International Game Developers Association will be investigating the matter.
Security

The Lesson of Recent Hacktivism 159

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-piss-off-the-internet dept.
itwbennett writes "LulzSec says they're retired, which may or may not be true. But one thing the world has learned from their 'frightening yet funny escapades is that 'the state of online security stinks,' writes blogger Tom Henderson. LulzSec (and Anonymous) have 'demonstrated that an awful lot of people are either asleep at the switch or believed in arcane security methods like security through obscurity.'" A related story at the Guardian suggests that governmental attempts to control the internet are spurring these activities.
Microsoft

Another Android Device Maker Signs Patent Agreement With Microsoft 203

Posted by Soulskill from the better-safe-than-sued dept.
doperative writes with this quote from El Reg: "Microsoft has nailed a second Android device maker to a patent licensing agreement. The Redmond software giant announced on Monday that General Dynamics Itronix has signed a patent agreement that will provide 'broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio.' In other words, General Dynamics Itronix has agreed to licensing certain, unnamed Microsoft patents for use with Android-powered portables."

Comment Re:As long as they stick with that UI (Score -1) 169

by Wiseman1024 (#35427482) Attached to: Google Releases Stable Version of Chrome 10

There's a reason why it can be argued that tabs are a bad idea. Tabs overlap the functionality of your choice of window manager and panel, and don't behave as your choice of window manager and panel. It can be argued that they're reinventing your desktop environment and have a long way to evolve into something as good as the existing desktop environments, for no minimally relevant advantage at all.

I've wanted to get rid of tabs long ago; it took me a lot of time to switch over to Chrome/Chromium and it was because of them. I ended up falling for these tabs, but not because they convinced me that they were any good; it's just that Firefox is so horrendously, abhorrently slow (especially at rendering text) in GNU/Linux that it drove me sick.

We're living though times for UNIX. Every good thing UNIX ever had and abstracted is getting killed. The command line (we need a big GUI project for every retarded thing you'd do in a line of shell), the window manager (tabs, and the GNOME guys want to kill it too for some aberrantly retarded reason), the X window system (they want to turn it into a Terminal Server type hack), and even the freaking filesystem (they seem to think people won't understand directories and will be settled with just "My Music", "My Porn" and whatever cheesy stupid thing they come up with).

Comment Biggest bug (Score -1) 481

by Wiseman1024 (#34927232) Attached to: Firefox 4, A Huge Pile of Bugs

The biggest bug: OpenGL for GNU/Linux is still under work.

If only Mozilla dedicated to the GNU/Linux version a tenth of the effort it dedicates to the Windows version, it wouldn't be easily the slowest browser in the platform and lack such essential 4.0 features. As it stands, it has nothing to do with Google Chrome.

If all Mozilla cares for is fighting MSIE, they should drop the Linux port rather than posting an unfinished, unoptimized product.
Piracy

P2P and P2P Links Ruled Legal In Spain 265

Posted by samzenpus from the pirate-friendly dept.
Nieriko writes After three years of arduous litigation, Jesus Guerra Calderon, owner of both a small bar and the P2P link webpage 'elrincondejesus.com' has beaten the SGAE (something like the Spanish version of the RIAA). The historic ruling states not only the legality of link webpages, but also the legality of P2P file-sharing networks. Quoting the judge: 'P2P Networks as mere data transmision networks between individual internet users, do not breach any rights protected by the Intellectual Property Law.' Downloading a file (from a P2P network) for private use is perfectly legal as long as there is no lucrative or collective use of the downloaded copy."
Internet Explorer

YouTube To Kill IE6 Support On March 13 282

Posted by CmdrTaco from the if-you-strike-me-down dept.
Joel writes "Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: 'Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.'"
Your Rights Online

Google Italy Execs Convicted Over YouTube Bullying Video 391

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-just-thought-of-the-children dept.
FTWinston writes "Three Italian Google executives have been convicted of privacy violations in Italy over the contents of a YouTube video showing a boy with Downs syndrome being bullied — despite the fact that the video was removed as soon as it was brought to their attention, and that Google assisted the authorities in locating those who posted it. Prosecutors argued that Google should have sought the consent of all parties involved with the video before allowing it to go online. Quite how they were meant to achieve this is another matter." Google has responded by saying this is a Serious threat to the web.
Australia

AU Internet Censorship Spells Bad News For Gamers 152

Posted by Soulskill from the no-hope-for-call-of-duty-kangaroo-wars dept.
eldavojohn writes "Kotaku is running an investigative piece examining what internet censorship means for games in Australia. Australia has some of the most draconian video game attitudes in the world, and the phrase 'refused classification' should strike fear in game developers and publishers looking to market games there. Internet censorship may expand this phrase to mean that anybody hosting anything about the game may suffer censorship in AU. Kotaku notes, 'This means that if a game is refused classification (RC) in Australia — like, say, NFL Blitz, or Getting Up — content related to these games would be added to the ISP filter. [This would bring up] a range of questions, foremost of those being: what happens when an otherwise harmless website ... hosts material from those games (screenshots, trailers, etc) that is totally fine in the US or Japan or Europe, but that has been refused classification in Australia?' Kotaku received a comment from the Australian Department of Broadband Communication promising that the whole website won't be blocked, just the material related to the game (videos, images, etc). Imagine maintaining that blacklist!"
Earth

Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807

Posted by kdawson from the so-many-notes-mister-mozart dept.
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
Internet Explorer

Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands 416

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-blame-the-second-amendment dept.
Esther Schindler writes "It's easy for techies to enumerate the reasons that Internet Explorer 6 should die. Although the percentage of users who use IE6 has dropped to about 12%, many web developers are forced to make sure their websites work with the ancient browser (which presents additional problems, such as keeping their companies from upgrading to newer versions of Windows). But rather than indulge in an emotional rant, in 'Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out Of Their Cold Dead Hands,' I set about to find out why the companies that remain standardized on IE6 haven't upgraded (never mind to what). In short: user and business-owner ignorance and/or disinterest in new technology; being stuck with a critical business app that relies on IE6; finding a budget to update internal IE6 apps that will work the same as they used to; and keeping users away from newer Web 2.0 sites."
Internet Explorer

Details Emerge On EU-Only "Browser Choice" Screen For Windows 220

Posted by timothy from the what-would-sun-tzu-do dept.
Simmeh writes "Microsoft have posted screenshots and details on their upcoming 'web browser choice screen.' Requirements include being in Europe, and having Internet Explorer set as your default browser. It comes with a few surprises, as the software automatically unpins Internet Explorer from your taskbar, and offers 11 alternative browsers."
Yahoo!

Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Gets Go-Ahead From EU, US DoJ 113

Posted by timothy from the will-it-blend? dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft and Yahoo announced Thursday morning that the US DOJ and the European Commission have approved an agreement between the two firms to have the Bing search engine power Yahoo's sites. The companies said that engineers will begin adapting Bing for the Yahoo site 'in the coming days' and that they hope work is completed, at least the US, by the end of this year."

Slashdot Top Deals

"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll

Close