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Classic Games (Games)

Stardock Tried To Make Star Control, Master of Orion Sequels 125

Gamasutra reports on comments from Stardock CEO Brad Wardell in which he described his efforts to revive two old but popular franchises: Star Control and Master of Orion. Quoting: "'I actually pitched Atari on a whole idea for a true successor to Star Control,' [he said], noting that the game would follow original series developer Toys for Bob's Star Control II rather than the Legend Entertainment-developed Star Control 3 ('We just pretend that never happened,' the CEO says of that release). ... Novato, California-based Toys for Bob has actually floated the idea of making its own Star Control II sequel, with co-creator Paul Reiche III indicating he has tossed potential design ideas around, but with the company now owned by publisher Activision the proposal seems to be stuck in limbo."
Image

The Science of the Lightsaber 197

Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power? In this article, you will have a chance to look inside a lightsaber and discover the source of its incredible characteristics." I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies.
Image

Gamer Plays Over 30 Warcraft Characters 189

If your significant other complains that you play too much World of Warcraft, just show them this article about a user named "Prepared." He plays an amazing 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers at the same time. He is his own raid group. "It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule," he writes. "Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."
Math

Submission + - EE Undergrad Wins Prize for 2,3 Turing Proof (wolframscience.com)

superdan2k writes: "A undergraduate electrical engineering student at the University of Birmingham (UK), Alex Smith in the United Kingdom, in a 40-page proof (PDF), has proven that a primitive type of computer known as a 2,3 Turing machine can solve every computational problem. There are write-ups on the proof in Nature and in Wolfram's blog.

This prize was previously mentioned on Slashdot back in May."

Programming

Submission + - Open Source? No Code?

WED Fan writes: "A few months ago, the popular Digg-like .NET resource DotNetKicks announced that it was going open-source. Yet, to this date, has released no code. Instead, there's been the lame excuse that it will be released in the future.

How many other projects announced they were going OSS and then failed to do so?"
Space

Submission + - Brightest Supernova Ever Seen

u-bend writes: "The Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed an incredibly bright and long-lasting supernova.
From the article:
The brightest stellar explosion ever recorded may be a long-sought new type of supernova, according to observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. This discovery indicates that violent explosions of extremely massive stars were relatively common in the early universe, and that a similar explosion may be ready to go off in our own galaxy.
A concise Yahoo News version can be found here."
Programming

Submission + - Alternatives to SF.net's CompileFarm?

cronie writes: Not long ago, SourceForge.net announced it shuts down the Compile Farm — a collection of computers running wide variety of OSes, available for compiling and testing open-source projects. SF.net states their resources "are best used at this time in improving other parts" of the service. I seriously consider this sad news for the OSS community, because portability is one of the strengths of OSS, and not many of us, developers, have such variety of platforms in our possession to compile and test our software on. As a consequence, I expect many projects dropping support for some of the platforms they simply don't have access to. Are there any sound alternatives with at least some popular OS/hardware combinations? Any plans to create one? (Perhaps Google or IBM might come up with something?)
Windows

Submission + - Symantec Releases Four Whitepapers Debunking Vista

kfed writes: Hot on the heals of research showing UAC in Vista could hide malware Symantec have now relesed four new whitepapers (two more to be released on Monday). The research is a mixture of high level fluff and more detailed technical analysis of certain technologies and their weaknesses. Symantec have given Vista mixed reviews, thumbs up in certain areas and down in others. If Symantec is engaging in competitive research one can only wonder what other MS competitors are up to.
Security

Submission + - Released Wordpress source code included hack

Slinky Sausage writes: "Thousands of servers running the Wordpress blogging software are at tremendous risk after it was revealed that a cracker had hacked into the Wordpress download servers and modified the software's source code. The hack was done shortly after the new version 2.1.1 was released, and the hack was undetected for several days, meaning that thousands of people who have upgraded to the latest 'security release' version of Wordpress have unintentionally installed what amounts to a trojan horse on their web server."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft kills off J# language

twofish writes: "Microsoft have announced that J#, its Java clone for .NET, and the Java Language Conversion Assistant will be discontinued and will not appear in the next version of Visual Studio. At the same time they have announced pans for a 64-bit version of the J# Redistributable this year."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia's Wales reverts himself on problem admin

ToiletDuck writes: "Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales appears to have changed his mind concerning Essjay, the administrator who was caught lying about his academic credentials. Wales issued a statement today on his User Talk page requesting that EssJay voluntarily step down from his Wikipedia roles normally reserved for trusted users. Wales defended his earlier comment about EssJay, claiming 'I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes...I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.' Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
Google

Submission + - Tax Accounting Evil at Google?

theodp writes: "In its annual report, Google said it's done no tax-accounting evil, but the search giant acknowledged that both the IRS and SEC are taking a look at the way in which it accounts for income tax. Google is one of a number of U.S. companies that have come under fire for allegedly practicing 'profit laundering', i.e., moving book profits offshore to evade millions and even billions in taxes to the country where it really operates. In past SEC filings, Google has credited its Irish subsidiary for reducing its effective tax rate."

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