aacool - Slashdot User

Submission + - World of Starcraft Mod Gets C&D from Blizzard (pixelatedgeek.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @02:23PM

eldavojohn writes: If you've been following the team who created World of Starcraft (an amazing mod of Starcraft to be more like World of Warcraft), their youtube video of what they've done so far has already resulted in a cease and desist from Activision/Blizzard. Evidently when you are given tools to make custom mods to games you should be careful about making something too good. The author of the mod is hopeful that it's just a trademark problem with the name of his mod but few details are out.

How Facebook Ships Code 314

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:31PM from the wish-i-had-hundreds-of-engineers dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The two largest teams at Facebook are Engineering and Ops, with roughly 400-500 team members each, together making up about 50% of the company. All engineers go through 4 to 6 week 'Boot Camp' training where they learn the Facebook system by fixing bugs. After boot camp, all engineers get access to the live DB and any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will so that engineers can modify specs mid-process, re-order work projects, and inject new feature ideas anytime. Then arguments about whether or not a feature idea is worth doing or not generally get resolved by spending a week implementing it and then testing it on a sample of users, e.g., 1% of Nevada users. 'All changes are reviewed by at least one person, and the system is easy for anyone else to look at and review your code even if you don't invite them to,' writes yeegay. 'It would take intentionally malicious behavior to get un-reviewed code in.' What is interesting for a company this size is that there is no official QA group at Facebook but almost every employee is dogfooding the product every day."

Submission + - Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1 on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @12:28PM

Velcroman1 writes: The most asked question in all of technology finally has an answer. When will Verizon get the iPhone? The answer: early next month. Verizon COO Lowell McAdam unveiled a new iPhone Tuesday during a presentation in New York that was short on surprises as most of the tech press already knew what was coming. “If the press writes about something long enough and hard enough, eventually it comes true,” McAdam joked. Nevertheless, the move clears a major hurdle for Apple as they face increasing competition in smartphones, particularly from devices based on Google Inc.'s Android software which has exploded in popularity. Verizon’s Lowell McAdam described the unveiling as a “great day for wireless customers across the U.S.”

Submission + - Dan Geer: Digital Affluence is Making Us Insecure (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @12:18PM

Trailrunner7 writes: The effect of our digital "affluence" contributes directly to digital insecurity. The general purpose computer offers far too many choices in the sense of far too many interfaces, far too many configuration parameters, far too many libraries, far too many conveniences, far too much extensibility. When, in the name of security, we "lock down" an operating system, we do so precisely so as to counter that surfeit of choice, by removing functions not in use, by reducing the choice set of what might be running. The reason that the Web browser is the principal entry point for malware is the number of choices that a browser offers up to whomever is at the other end. Evolving technologies like HTML5 promise to make this significantly worse.

The peculiar physics of digital assets — if I steal your data you still have it, to take an example — mean that data owners (and auditors) can only seek infallible protection for digital assets. But when you expect perfection, it is impossible to have a pleasant surprise.

Submission + - Fermi scope spots antimatter from thunderstorms (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by abelian on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @06:36AM

abelian writes: In a beautiful piece of scientific serendipity, the Fermi space telescope has spotted streams of antimatter produced by thunderstorms just over the horizon on Earth. The streams of positrons — and their matter counterpart, electrons — seem to be related to terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, created in thunderstorms.

The BBC's article quotes Steven Cummer, an atmospheric electricity researcher from Duke University in North Carolina, who called the find "truly amazing".

"I think this is one of the most exciting discoveries in the geosciences in quite a long time — the idea that any planet has thunderstorms that can create antimatter and then launch it into space in narrow beams that can be detected by orbiting spacecraft to me sounds like something straight out of science fiction," he said.

"It has some very important implications for our understanding of lightning itself. We don't really understand a lot of the detail about how lightning works. It's a little bit premature to say what the implications of this are going to be going forward, but I'm very confident this is an important piece of the puzzle."

Submission + - Qualcomm Demos World's Fastest Smartphone (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @06:35AM

siliconbits writes: Qualcomm showed us its latest version of the Snapdragon Mobile Development Platform at CES 2011, which will be the blueprint of many next generation phones to appear in 2011. Available exclusively through BSQUARE for around $999, it will be available shortly to developers only and will feature a dual core MSM8660.

Record Labels To Pay For Copyright Infringement 235

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @06:09AM from the of-pots-and-kettles dept.

innocent_white_lamb writes "Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit. 'The 2008 class action alleges that the record companies "exploited" music owners by reproducing and selling in excess of 300,000 song titles without securing licenses from the copyright owners and/or without paying the associated royalty payments. The record companies knowingly did so and kept a so-called "pending list" of unlicensed reproductions, setting aside $50 million for the issue, if it ever arose, court filings suggest.'"

Submission + - E3 2011 Rego Open And Exhibitor List Revealed (gamepron.com)

Submitted by UgLyPuNk on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @06:06AM

UgLyPuNk writes: The first big update is, of course, the Exhibitor list, which is ripe with speculation potential. Who’s on the list? More tellingly, who’s not? What will they be unveiling on the show floor? We’re not into counting our chickens, but it just wouldn’t be E3 without a healthy dose of anticipation.

Submission + - The Evolutionary Imperatives of Google (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

aacool

on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @05:33AM

aacool writes: "Paul Krugman opines, inspired by reports of Google having fallen into a rut,
If you follow evolutionary theory, you know that one big question is why sexual reproduction evolved and why it persists, given the substantial costs involved. Why doesn't nature just engage in cloning? And the most persuasive answer, as I understand it, is defense against parasites. If each generation of an organism looks exactly like the last, parasites can steadily evolve to bypass the organism's defenses which is why yes, we'll have no bananas once the fungus spreads to cloned plantations around the world. But scrambling the genes each generation makes the parasites'job harder. So the trouble with Google is that it's a huge target, to which human parasites scammers and spammers are adapting. I'm not quite sure what search-engine sex would involve. But Google apparently needs some.
"

Submission + - Underground city uncovered with lasers (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @05:22AM

An anonymous reader writes: Here's a great use of laser scanning technology — the Nottingham Caves Survey have been using a Leica laser scanner to map and visualize hundreds of man-made caves hidden beneath the city of Nottingham in the UK. Results as seen on Gizmodo are pretty spectacular!

Submission + - Why Teach Programming with BASIC (kickstarter.com) 3

Submitted by

chromatic

on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @05:09PM

chromatic writes: "To answer the perennial question "How can we teach kids how to program?", we created a web-based programming environment. As we began to write lessons and examples, we surprised ourselves. Modern languages may be powerful and useful for writing real programs, but BASIC and Logo are great languages for demonstrating the joy of programming."

Comment How do I program? (Score 1) 616

by aacool on Sunday March 01, 2009 @01:11PM (#27030699) Attached to: Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose

Basic question - how do I learn how to program for the PS3?

The Pirate Bay Tops 10 Million Users 300

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 27, 2008 @02:31AM from the my-word-it's-a-convoy dept.

An anonymous reader suggests we go over to Slyck for news that The Pirate Bay has cracked 10 million users. The publicity from the upcoming court case probably helped. "Today, The Pirate Bay asserts itself as the self-proclaimed 'World's Largest Tracker' by topping over 10 million peers, while managing over 1 million torrents. Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay told Slyck, 'We're very happy to be part of all of this and we hope our users keep sharing those files!... And we're looking to break 20 million as well.'"

Submission + - Book Review: The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book (desicritics.org)

Submitted by

aacool

on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @10:46AM

aacool writes: "Lego Mindstorms Nxt have been a wonderful source of fun for hobbyists worldwide. The Idea book gives you many ways of exploring the platform. The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book: Design, Invent, and Build (No Starch Press) takes contributions from 11 authors and adopts a cookbook approach. The book briefly explains the basics to get you grounded in the material. But quickly thereafter, the book takes a leap to address intermediate builders. The assumption is that online resources will help bridge the gap. Its an approach that works.
What do slashdotters think of Mindstorms and Lego?"

AT&T Welcomes Programmers for All Phones Except the iPhone 283

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @10:46AM from the come-out-and-play dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's reasoning for keeping the iPhone a closed platform is that they don't want to 'potentially gum up the provider's network'. An article in the New York Times, though, points out that there are hundreds of phones out there working on open platforms that don't seem to be causing network interference. AT&T and Palm, in fact, welcome experimentation on their platforms. In AT&T's case ... on every phone but the iPhone. 'Hackers who have explored the workings of the phone say it uses the frameworks and structures that Apple uses on its other platforms to enable development; it just hasn't been documented. So if Apple is going to allow applications later, is there any reason -- other than vindictiveness or obsessive interest in control -- that it would want to cut off those developed by the pioneers who figured things out ahead of the official launch?'"

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