Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Freedom? (Score 1) 148

In short, I think this law would have little impact on the types of kids who are out and about at that time of night.

You're right about that part.. What I don't get is why enforce a curfew on a subset of youth? If you're going to try to straighten out youth, I would figure that you would want to target teens who would be more likely to commit crimes rather than a group that is less likely to do so.. To punish people for not committing a crime? Bad form imo..

Comment Re:The first thing to come to my mind... (Score 1) 541

I think you're thinking of Aqua not Cocoa.. Cocoa is Objective C programming for the game engine which is a different ball of wax than what it would be like to port to linux. The graphics libraries being OpenGL - yeah that will help a move to linux, but it's obviously not 100% to the point of running a mac binary on a linux box.

Comment Re:Not the best idea (Score 4, Insightful) 572

If emergency calls cannot go through under "100%" usage of the tower, something is seriously wrong. There needs to be bandwidth provisioned and reserved for emergency calls for every tower and trunk.

If this does affect emergency calls, AT&T really does need to get their shit together. I assume there are laws in place to enforce the transmission of emergency calls. Hell AT&T gets a free stress test of their network which is something they should be doing anyway. Real world data of extreme usage. Study, learn and yes: build a better network because of it.

Comment Re:Street fighter 4 PC does localization right... (Score 1) 90

The first .hack series had Japanese or English audio which was great. The fact that the game was spread over four games wasn't so good... But the tone and intonation was lost between the two and is a frequent thing. I'm enough of a japanophile to notice/care/whine about things like that.. When you get things like MGS4 which they claim fills the 50 GB BD DL without room for multi audio, I get suspicious, but it's mainly RPGs that I care about anyway... Theory goes that Bluray's capacity will help this process along.. It makes no sense to have all that work and just throw it out when it adds value to the game.. How hard is it to maintain a list of audio files j0001.wav vs. e0001.wav? The second .hack series didn't have this option, but you should search online about undubs.. There are people who splice in the Japanese audio into US games.. (Mainly PS2) They are really neat except for when you come across a game that has better dubs than the original like Persona 4.. Igor sounds pretty badass and cryptic in English and like a fruitcake in Japanese.. I only hope Tales of Vesperia PS3 makes it here and with full audio in English and Japanese..

Comment Re:This will end badly (Score 1) 148

Actually (at least for Canada), you CAN'T buy iPhone apps using a gift card. It's only good for music/TV/movies.. Not sure if the allowance could work for iPhone apps, but hopefully that's just a temporary "iPhone apps are new and it's not implemented" type thing rather than a decision...

Comment Re:Skytel (Score 1) 584

Do you know what all the paging tone songs are? I can only figure out #1 of 8 which is The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.. I've been trying too hard to figure it out.. Maybe some of those iPhone apps that take the mic input to return a song/artist name would help

Software

(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks? 702

haroldag writes "I thoroughly enjoyed the recent post about Unix tricks, so I ask Slashdot vim users, what's out there? :Sex, :b#, marks, ctags. Any tricks worth sharing?"
Space

Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth 235

MaxwellEdison writes "Scientists have discovered evidence of magnetic portals connecting the Earth and the Sun every 8 minutes. 'Several speakers at the Workshop have outlined how FTEs form: On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. The European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through.'"
Microsoft

Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source 383

mjasay writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft is hosting Windows-only projects on its 'open source project hosting site,' CodePlex. Miguel de Icaza caught and criticized Microsoft for doing this with its Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF), licensing it under the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL), which restricts use of the code to Windows. Microsoft has changed the license for MEF to an OSI-approved license, the Microsoft Public License, but it continues to host a range of other projects under the Ms-LPL. If CodePlex wasn't an 'open source project hosting site,' this wouldn't be a problem. But when Microsoft invokes the 'open source' label, it has a duty to live up to associated expectations and ensure that the code it releases on CodePlex is actually open source. If it doesn't want to do this — if it doesn't want to abide by this most basic principle of open source — then call CodePlex something else and we'll all move on."
The Courts

RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator" 191

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Texas grandmother Rhonda Crain got the RIAA to drop its monetary claims against her after she filed counterclaims against the record companies for using an investigator, MediaSentry, which is not licensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas. The RIAA elected to drop its claims rather than wait for the Judge to decide the validity of Ms. Crain's charges (PDF) that the plaintiff record companies were 'aware that the... private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign.' Similar questions about MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations were raised recently by the State Attorney General of Oregon in Arista v. Does 1-17"
Science

Birth of an Island 136

slashmojo writes that while some islands are sinking, last August another rose from the ocean, formed by volcanic activity and caught in the act by a passing yacht. From the article: "What looked like a brown stain on the South Pacific turned out to be a spectacular drift of floating pumice stones stretching more than 16 km — and an indication an island was being born nearby... 'We are getting emails from volcanologists saying this is so rare.'" Here is the blog post of the yachtsman who photographed the nascent island.

Slashdot Top Deals

Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker

Working...