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Germany Considers Banning Wild Facebook Parties 100

Posted by samzenpus from the shut-it-down dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wild Facebook parties tend to occur when a Facebook Event invitation to a typical small gathering is mistakenly posted publicly, and then goes viral. This results in injuries and arrests as hundreds or even thousands show up for a party meant for a handful of people. A recent wave of these out-of-control Facebook parties has left German officials and politicians trying to figure how to deal with the trend."
Graphics

Nintendo 3DS GPU Revealed 133

Posted by Soulskill from the powered-by-sunshine-and-bubblegum dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The GPU for the Nintendo 3DS has just been revealed, and it's not made by Nvidia, ATI, or even Imagination Technologies. Instead, Nintendo has signed up Japanese startup Digital Media Professionals (DMP) in a deal that sees the company's PICA200 chip churning out the 3-D visuals. For the first time in Nintendo's history, the 3DS will feature a GPU with programmable shaders, rather than a fixed-function pipeline, meaning the 3DS is more graphically versatile than the Wii. Among the PICA200's features are 2x anti-aliasing, per-pixel lighting, subdivision primitives, and soft shadows. As well as featuring DMP's own 'Maestro' extensions, the PICA200 also fully supports OpenGL ES 1.1. The architecture supports four programmable vertex units and up to four pixel pipelines."
Image

Woman Jailed For Starting Office Fire To Leave Work Early 136

Posted by samzenpus from the take-this-job-and-spark-it dept.
A Florida woman was sentenced to nine months in jail, followed by five years of probation, for starting an office fire so she could get out of work early. From the article: "Pasco sheriff's investigators said Michelle Perrino, 40, started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen on May 12, 2009. Perrino drew suspicion when she mentioned the fire's origin — a filing cabinet — during an employee meeting. Employees had not been told where the fire started." I hope she had the good sense to start the fire on Friday so she could have a long weekend.

Comment Obvious answer (Score 1) 918

by ofprimes (#27352819) Attached to: With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35?

My story is similar to yours, except that I am 42 now and got my bachelors degree at 40. I am currently working on my masters degree and will finish in 2010 - at 43. I have been working in the IT industry for about 10 years so that is an advantage, but IMO I am just reaching my prime in the industry, and have plenty of growth ahead (and $$$).

As opposed to many certifications, a college degree LASTS FOREVER, so get one whether you think you are an old man or not. You will be thankful down the road. You will get hired upon completing the degree and after a few years in the field you will have many opportunities. You will be promoted to management faster (if you choose to go that direction) and will grasp concepts quicker than the younger crowd if your mind and passion is truly in the IT field.

The thing you have that no 22 yo graduate has is life experience. You know how people behave in situations from living many years more than the younger crowd. If you have a house, wife, kids, car payments, etc., this shows a level of responsibility that a youngster cannot claim at that point in their life.

As Nike used to say - Just do it! You will have no regrets - until the student loans come due of course...

Comment Re:If I were from colorado.. (Score 1) 530

by ofprimes (#27098827) Attached to: State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe

Why are you linking that stuff here? You think anyone from and IT department that lauds the security of IE6 actually reads Slashdot? ;)

I am from the CO state IT department (not a webdev), and frankly I find this thread hilarious! I only use FF and when this site didn't work the other day (I did not heed the warnings), I used my handy FF add-in, IE Tab.
Security

State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe 530

Posted by timothy from the sheeps'-bladders-may-be-used-to-prevent-earthquakes dept.
linuxkrn writes "The State of Colorado's Office of Technology (OIT) has set up a work skills website. The problem is that the site says 'DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk.' (Original emphasis from site.) If the leading IT agency for the State is making these uneducated claims, should the people worry about their other decisions?"
Star Wars Prequels

Leaked Star Wars Battlefront III Footage 33

Posted by Soulskill from the use-high-def-luke dept.
rambo_ando writes "GameSpot UK journalist Luke Anderson received a tip from an anonymous tipster and Free Radical Design employee today who wanted to show off internal video of Battlefront III , which the games studio, now under administration, has lost the rights to develop. The source, a confirmed Free Radical employee, said of the game, 'it was going to be the best ever.' The five-minute video features gameplay of Stormtroopers, Ewoks, Tauntauns, The Millennium Falcon, TIE Fighters, A-Wings and what looks to be Boba Fett's ship, Slave I — as well as a prominent FRD logo watermark throughout. According to the person who posted the video on YouTube, 'this video was taken in an internal show-and-tell Alpha meeting back in November.'"
Hardware

The Best Gaming PC Money Can Buy 360

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-we-post-this-every-few-months dept.
SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their best PC hardware configurations for Q1 2009. They've broken it into three tiers depending on the investor's budget. And while the prices are regional, it is comparative across the globe. The site has also detailed the 10 Hottest PC Games of 2009 to unveil the software on the horizon which may seduce gamers into an upgrade."
The Almighty Buck

EMA Suggests Point-Of-Sale Game Activation To Fight Piracy 244

Posted by Soulskill from the new-ways-to-break-things dept.
Gamasutra reports on a set of standards (PDF) published by the Entertainment Merchants Association to promote the use of technology that would "disable" games and DVDs until they are activated when purchased. "The effort is codenamed 'Project Lazarus,' and the EMA says it's assembled a consortium of retailers, home video companies and video game publishers to see how easily such 'benefit denial technology' could be implemented, and to evaluate possible cost-benefit analyses. The initiative is similar to security tags used in clothing retail that spill ink on garments if they're forcibly removed, thereby destroying the item. In such a situation, shoplifting is discouraged by implementing a solution that only the retailer can remove at the point of sale."
Science

Laser Triggers Electrical Activity In Thunderstorm 167

Posted by kdawson from the ionized-path-between-the-clouds-part-deux dept.
esocid writes "A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm. At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves up to several meters long. Triggering lightning strikes is an important tool for basic and applied research because it enables researchers to study the mechanisms underlying lightning strikes. Moreover, triggered lightning strikes will allow engineers to evaluate and test the lightning-sensitivity of airplanes and critical infrastructure such as power lines. Research into laser-triggered lightning has been going on for some years. Until now, no experiment was able to produce a long enough plasma channel to affect the electrical activity inside clouds."
Graphics

Nvidia Physics Engine Almost Complete 179

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the close-only-counts-in-horseshoes-and-hand-grenades dept.
Nvidia has stated that their translation of Ageia's physics engine to CUDA is almost complete. To showcase the capabilities of the new tech Nvidia ran a particle demonstration similar to Intel's Nehalem demo, at ten times the speed. "While Intel's Nehalem demo had 50,000-60,000 particles and ran at 15-20 fps (without a GPU), the particle demo on a GeForce 9800 card resulted in 300 fps. In the very likely event that Nvidia's next-gen parts (G100: GT100/200) will double their shader units, this number could top 600 fps, meaning that Nehalem at 2.53 GHz is lagging 20-40x behind 2006/2007/2008 high-end GPU hardware. However, you can't ignore the fact that Nehalem in fact can run physics."

NASA's Rollercoaster For Moon Rocket Escape 128

Posted by Zonk from the funnest-ride-you-never-want-to-take dept.
simonbp writes "NASA's Constellation Project has approved the Rollercoaster Escape System to be used as the Emergency Egress Systems (EES) for astronauts and pad crew to race away from the Ares I pad, should an emergency be called. The Ares I is the first of NASA's new moon/Mars rockets and is scheduled for a first manned flight in 2014." From the article: "An unpowered fixed single-rail system from the access arm level of the ML tower to the existing bunker would be used. The railcars could be enclosed to provide personnel protection. Each railcar can hold four to six people. The rail would follow the ML tower vertically down to the pad surface, then turn and continue close to the ground to the safety bunker. A passive magnetic and friction braking system will decelerate the cars at the tracks end as well as prevent the cars from hitting each other."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Scientists propose turning retarded into midgets

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have proposed turning severely disabled children into artificial midgets in order to save money on their institutionalization, and make it easier to institutionalize them at home:
Link to study at research.seattlechildrens.org

As far as I can tell, this is a serious proposal. I haven't heard of anything like this being seriously suggested since the 1930s, and especially not associated with a distinguished organization like Seattle Children's Hospital. Are we going to see more radical cost cutting proposals like this in the healthcare industry?

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