Comment Re:7 to Vista is as SE to 98 (Score 1) 856
I don't know any other business that can successfully release a broken product and then charge their customers full price for what essentially amounts to a product upgrade.
...Apple?
Comment Re:research in motion (Score 4, Funny) 374
Canada comes from the Iroquois word 'Kanata', which means villiage, or settlement. It was in common use anywhere the Iroquois were - which includes the area above the Great Lakes - but also below, and around
Really? I thought the name "Canada" came from the two folks who first discovered it.
"Great country, eh?," said the first one. "What should we name it, eh?"
"I know," said the second one. "We'll put some letters in a hat, eh, and then we'll take turns drawing the letters out, eh, and that's how we'll name the place!"
"Good idea, eh!" said the first one. He pulled off his toupe, scribbled some letters on some paper scraps, dumped them into the toupe, shook it up, and they began to draw.
"Oh, I got a 'c', eh!"
"I got an 'n', eh!"
LittleBigPlanet Sequel Already In the Works 27
Now that the delay caused by a rogue song has come and passed, the LittleBigPlanet servers have been turned on, and creations are beginning to filter in. A BBC feature on the game revealed that plans are already underway for a sequel. Another report suggests that they're looking at other methods for expanding the game as well:
"With the game just hitting stores, it's too early to start talking about sequels, but Media Molecule already is looking into how they can get more creative tools into the hands of their users. 'We can release new levels, new stickers, new content,' Evans said. 'It's pretty clear to me that we have to move in a fluid direction about what's a sequel and what's not a sequel.'"
Submission + - Robert Jordan dies (dragonmount.com)
willith writes: "James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren't enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete. While there is hope that the book will still be finished from Jordan's notes, this is devastating news to all of us who have been reading the series since 1990."
Submission + - iPhone release date confirmed for 29 June (apple.com)
willith writes: "Apple has placed three iPhone commercials on their web site today, and each of them end with a tag: "Coming June 29". This puts to rest the question of when the thing will hit the streets, but there are still worries about allocation — some sites are reporting that the allocation of iPhones to Cingular/AT&T stores will be relatively tight. The adverts do however shed light on another previously-unanswered question — the iPhone will only be available with a new two-year contract."
Submission + - Illinois Anti-Gaming Law Goes Down in Flames
An anonymous reader writes: A federal court has struck down an Illinois law which criminalized the sale of "sexually explicit" video games to minors. In reaching this decision, the court held that the Illinois law was too broad, because it could be read to encompass any game which displayed a female breast, even for a brief second. Interestingly, the court chose the game God of War as the model of gaming art which must be protected. As the court explained "because the SEVGL potentially criminalizes the sale of any game that features exposed breasts, without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game's social value for minors, distribution of God of War is potentially illegal, in spite of the fact that the game tracks the Homeric epics in content and theme. As we have suggested in the past, there is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey."
Submission + - Mac OS X Spyware Sample Discovered
Steve Minko writes: "eWEEK is reporting on the discovery an adware/spyware program capable of launching browser windows on Apple Computer's Mac OS X. According to a warning from F-Secure, the proof-of-concept program could be silently installed on a Mac's User account and hooked to each application used by that account. The company said the sample, named iAdware, successfully launched the Mac's built-in Safari Web browser whenever applications were being used."
Submission + - Federal Court: Kiddie Porn Laws Reward Ignorance
An anonymous reader writes: Under federal anti-child porn laws, a person must know they are downloading child porn and storing it on their workstation in order to be subject to prosecution. This fact saved a Montana pedophile several months in prison after he was caught with 110 images of child pornography in his personal folders, and as many as 19,000 in his web browser's cache. Because the pedophile did not know that his browser was storing the images in a cache folder on his hard drive, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that he could not be held responsible for them under federal law. Accordingly, he could only be found guilty of downloading the 110 images in his personal files, and he received a much lighter sentence.
Of course Slashdot readers are much savier internet users than this schmuck, and they know full well how their web browsers work. Let that be a warning to any of us who would look at naked children.
Of course Slashdot readers are much savier internet users than this schmuck, and they know full well how their web browsers work. Let that be a warning to any of us who would look at naked children.
Submission + - An Apple .dmg Exploit?
bouncinglime writes: "The BBC website is carrying an interesting story about a possible exploit in the Mac OSX kernel.
From the article: "The flaw involves the way OS X handles disk images and could be used to crash or take over a vulnerable machine. So far the DMG bug has only been shown to work under laboratory conditions and has not been seen in the wild."
The full article is available for free at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6187302.stm ."
From the article: "The flaw involves the way OS X handles disk images and could be used to crash or take over a vulnerable machine. So far the DMG bug has only been shown to work under laboratory conditions and has not been seen in the wild."
The full article is available for free at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6187302.stm ."
