Comment Re:Science and Politics (Score 1) 152
Well, personally, I'm thrilled they're trying to keep NASA alive
Yeah! That Obama is killing NASA what with his increase of its budget. Wait...
--M
Submission + - Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking (timesonline.co.uk)
Megaport writes: Promoting his new series on Discovery channel, Stephen Hawking has given an interview to the Times where "he has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact." He says, "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."
Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?
Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?
Submission + - Ubisoft's DRM cracked. For real this time. (pcpowerplay.com.au)
therufus writes: A few days after the release of Assassin's Creed II, naughty piracy sites were announcing they had cracked Ubisoft's Online Services Platform. Turns out, that wasn't entirely true. While it was possible to load into the game, players were unable to advance past a certain memory block. But now, it seems like they'll need to draft a new response. Less than 24 hours ago, a crack began circulating that removes the DRM entirely. PC Powerplay Australia has been covering the development.
Ubisoft DRM Causing More Problems 279
Joe Helfrich writes "Ubisoft's Settlers 7 servers have been causing problems for over a week for users worldwide, and Australian gamers are hardly able to connect at all. 'The problem reportedly strikes after the game has already confirmed an active Internet connection, and prevents the user from playing even the single-player campaign, returning the error "server not available." But they are available, because other people are logged into them and merrily playing away.' Wonder how they're going to describe this one as an attack."
Comment Asking slashdot... (Score 1) 295
My daughter just moved to china to work for a year. Our family has a google app domain that we all use for email. Before she left I configured her laptop so she could send and receive mail but I'm worried that google's china dispute might escalate.
Does anyone know the mechanism used by the "great firewall"? For example, if our MX records are aspmx.l.google.com (and from memory google run their SMTP/IMAP on non-standard ports too) is this likely to be caught up in a series of tit-for-tat blocking or will it just be things like good old port 80 to gmail.com?
The webpage report linked in the article still shows gmail as not blocked, but if it does get blocked will my daughter be cut off from her email address at our family's google-hosted domain?
--M
Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits 104
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
Aussie Attorney General Says Gamers Are Scarier Than Biker Gangs 409
Sasayaki writes "South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson claims, in an interview with Good Game, that gamers were more of a threat to his family than biker gangs. This is the man who has been the biggest opponent to Australia receiving an R18+ rating for video games and who has the power to veto any such law introducing it."
IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? 193
An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"
Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"
The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451
drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."
Submission + - Meteor impact caught on traffic cam (thesun.co.uk)
Megaport writes: Amazing video of a meteor streaking across the sky and exploding was caught on a traffic camera in Jo'burg. "There was a sudden flash, like an orange stripe in the sky, followed by a very bright explosion where the sky lit up as if it was daytime."
Submission + - Music sharing a social, not ethical, issue
athloi writes: "Recent studies by two Kent State University professors suggest that file sharing and downloading music is "more of a social phenomenon than an economic one." As one article related,
> "That is," say the researchers, "downloaders of free, so-called 'pirate' music
> seemed to be more motivated by the social aspect of trading and sharing music with
> other music enthusiasts rather than the proposition of saving money on music
> purchases."
In other news, students are finding out the hard way that downloading is where the law intrudes on what they see as a fun, social hobby and a way to interact with other kids.
> Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for
> some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room.
Socialization has been the promise of the music industry for teenagers since the 1940s, justifying its sale of a cheap product at high prices through years of marketing portraying rock music as a way to socialize teenagers and introduce them to interaction with others (since they don't have exciting jobs, neurotic sex lives and life insurance to gab about like adults)."
> "That is," say the researchers, "downloaders of free, so-called 'pirate' music
> seemed to be more motivated by the social aspect of trading and sharing music with
> other music enthusiasts rather than the proposition of saving money on music
> purchases."
In other news, students are finding out the hard way that downloading is where the law intrudes on what they see as a fun, social hobby and a way to interact with other kids.
> Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for
> some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room.
Socialization has been the promise of the music industry for teenagers since the 1940s, justifying its sale of a cheap product at high prices through years of marketing portraying rock music as a way to socialize teenagers and introduce them to interaction with others (since they don't have exciting jobs, neurotic sex lives and life insurance to gab about like adults)."
Submission + - A new weapon against tsunamis
Roland Piquepaille writes: "A new mooring system has been developed by U.S. researchers to install a seismic monitoring station on the top of an active underwater volcano in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. According to the researchers who installed the underwater earthquake monitoring system on top of Kick'em Jenny volcano, their Real Time Offshore Seismic Station (RTOSS) will significantly improve the ability of natural hazard managers to notify and protect the island of Granada's residents from volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Read more for additional details and illustrations about the RTOSS."
