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Movies

Mass Effect To Invade the Big Screen 142

Posted by Soulskill from the seth-green-seems-like-a-lock dept.
UgLyPuNk writes "This could be a good thing or a bad thing: EA has just confirmed that it's making Mass Effect into a movie. The franchise has been acquired by Legendary Pictures, which is best known for its co-productions of The Dark Knight, Clash of the Titans, 300, Watchmen, and, um, The Hangover, as part of a co-financing agreement with Warner Bros."
Media

Theora Development Continues Apace, VP8 Now Open Source 312

Posted by timothy from the long-term-vision dept.
SergeyKurdakov writes "Monty 'xiphmont' Montgomery of the Xiph Foundation says the latest action-packed, graph- and demo-clip-stuffed Theora project update page (demo 9) is now up for all and sundry! Catch up on what's gone into the new Theora encoder Ptalarbvorm over the last few months. It also instructs how to pronounce 'Ptalarbvorm.' Ptalarbvorm is not a finished release encoder yet, though I've personally been using it in production for a few months. Pace on improvements hasn't slowed down — the subjective psychovisual work being done by Tim Terriberry and Greg Maxwell has at least doubled-again on the improvements made by Thusnelda, and they're not anywhere near done yet. As a bonus Monty gathered all Xiph demo pages in one place." Also on the video codec front, and also with a Xiph connection, atamido writes "Google has released On2's VP8 video codec to the world, royalty-free. It is packaging it with Vorbis audio, in a subset of the Matroska container, and calling it WebM. It's not branded as an exclusively Google project — Mozilla and Opera are also contributors. Builds of your favorite browsers with full support are available." An anonymous reader points out this technical analysis of VP8.

Comment Re:actually (Score 2, Informative) 236

by Jettamann (#31826916) Attached to: Lessons In Hardware / OS Troubleshooting

If I had mod points.. i would devote them all to you..

I do exactly what you do in ALL my workstations.. from my 8 year old 1.7Ghz single Core Pentium-M with only 2GB Ram (Run windows 732bit Host) and use VMWare Workstation 7 to run latest ubuntu in full screen... its fast.. all the way to my latest 64bit Core-i7 HyperThreaded runing 64bit Windows-7 with 8GB Ram.. with 4GB devoted to my 32bit paravirtualized kernel of Ubuntu 9.10 for development in full screen on a tripple monitor system!

Can't beat it for flexibility and maximum choice of tools for everything.

Its really too bad that Apple never lets OS-X run in VM on non apple hardware.. then I would be in heaven!
Programming

Learning and Maintaining a Large Inherited Codebase? 532

Posted by timothy from the bequeathed-and-devised dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A couple of times in my career, I've inherited a fairly large (30-40 thousand lines) collection of code. The original authors knew it because they wrote it; I didn't, and I don't. I spend a huge amount of time finding the right place to make a change, far more than I do changing anything. How would you learn such a big hunk of code? And how discouraged should I be that I can't seem to 'get' this code as well as the original developers?"
X

X11 Chrome Reportedly Outperforms Windows and Mac Versions 542

Posted by timothy from the please-keep-it-that-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a curious contrast to conventional wisdom, there are reports of X11 Chromium being faster than Windows or Mac versions. In the thread titled 'Why is Linux Chrome so fast?,' a developer speculates that it is due to the use of X11 capabilities: 'On X-windows [sic], the renderer backingstores are managed by the X server, and the transport DIBs are also managed by the X server. So, we avoid a lot of memcpy costs incurred on Windows due to keeping the backingstores in main memory there.' Has the design of X11 withstood the test of time better than people tend to give it credit for?"
Networking

Suitable Naming Conventions For Workstations? 688

Posted by kdawson from the tune's-my-own-invention dept.
spectre_240sx writes "We've discussed server naming a fair amount in the past, but I haven't seen much about workstations. Where I currently work, we embed a lot of information in our workstation names: site, warranty end date, machine type, etc. I'm of the opinion that this is too much information to overload in the machine name when it can more suitably be stored in the computer description. I'd love to hear how others are naming their workstations and some pros and cons for different naming schemes. Should computers be logically tied to the person that they're currently assigned to, or does that just cause unnecessary work when a machine changes hands? Do the management tools in use make a difference in how workstations are named?"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Man Attempts to Build Toaster from Raw Materials

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes: Thomas Thwaites is attempting to build a toaster from raw materials, meaning ore. His page describes the materials he will need, attempts to smelt iron ore, and some comments on the significance of the huge industrial complex that gives us things like toasters. It's an ongoing project, so stay tuned! From his page: "After some research I have determined that I will need the following materials to make a toaster. Copper, to make the pins of the electric plug, the cord, and internal wires. Iron to make the steel grilling apparatus, and the spring to pop up the toast. Nickel to make the heating element. Mica (a mineral a bit like slate) around which the heating element is wound, and of course plastic for the plug and cord insulation, and for the all important sleek looking casing. The first four of these materials are dug out of the ground, and plastic is derived from oil, which is generally sucked up through a hole. Part of the project consists of finding the places where it's possible to dig up these raw materials. Mining no longer happens in the UK, but the country is dotted with abandoned mines, some having been worked since before the 'UK' existed, but all currently uneconomical. Finding ways to process the raw materials on a domestic scale is also an issue. For example, my first attempt to extract metal involved a chimney pot, some hair-dryers, a leaf blower, and a methodology from the 15th century — this is about the level of technology we can manage when we're acting alone. I failed to get pure enough iron in this way, though if I'd tried a few more times and refined my technique and knowledge of the process I probably would've managed in the end. Instead I found a 2001 patent about industrial smelting of Iron ores using microwave energy. "
The Military

Submission + - Archives Show Poison Dart Bombs Developed for WWII

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that newly opened archives from World War II show a coordinated project between Britain and Canada to develop millions of darts, to be dropped from aircraft in "500lb cluster projectiles" each containing 30,000 darts laced with a poison that could cause death "within 30 seconds" without damaging nearby buildings or equipment. A "grooved zinc alloy dart" would contain a small poison deposit in the hollow needle section, kept in place by a cotton and wax seal, while a paper tail would keep it flying straight at up to 250 ft per second. Under the heading "Lethality" the "Top Secret" note explained: "If penetrating into the flesh, will cause death if not plucked out within 30 seconds. If plucked out within this time will cause disablement by collapse. Collapse occurs within 1-5 minutes, and death within 30 minutes." Trials with the darts were conducted at an experimental station in Suffield, Alberta, Canada where in one experiment, the Canadians dressed sheep and goats in two layers of battledress material and positioned them across a wide area, some in trenches, to be exposed to the killer darts. It is unclear why the weapon was rejected although it is speculated that Britain may have worried that its enemies would adopt the poisoned darts and use them on British troops. "To our modern sensibilities it seems shocking and there's a real sense of viciousness about this weapon," says Mark Dunton, a contemporary history specialist at the National Archives. "But it shows the Allies were prepared to consider anything — no matter how gruesome — to secure a victory.""
Input Devices

Submission + - Humble Delete and Escape keys to get bigger (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: After a year's research, Lenovo boffins have decided the time is right to install larger Delete and Escape keys on their updated ThinkPad laptop T400s range. While it is a small change, it is fairly radical to tinker with an area of hardware which has been largely unchanged since the 19th century. What convinced them to make the size-change was doing some tests on users to see which keys they use the most. They found that on average, people used the Escape and Delete keys 700 times per week, yet those were the only non-letter keys that Lenovo hasn't made any bigger.

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