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Comment Re:Where's the Super Hero? (Score 1) 590

by MrRobahtsu (#37693632) Attached to: Real Life Super Hero Arrested

Eh, no, he was just a cop doing his job trying to arrest a prostitute. IIRC, there were other under-cover cops around, also. The prostitute was just trying to get out of getting arrested. The point is, if you don't know for damn sure who the bad guy is and you intervene, you're very likely to get it wrong. She was in no danger of being raped despite the Internet Armchair Quarterback protestations otherwise.

Comment Where's the Super Hero? (Score 1) 590

by MrRobahtsu (#37690588) Attached to: Real Life Super Hero Arrested

I read an article about a delusional criminal and kept waiting for a hero to show up. I never saw one.

Now, I've been called lots of names because I carry a gun every day, but I'm not a vigilante. Intervening in that situation was just plain stupid. No, criminal. And it could have been much worse. There's the story of the guy who heard a woman screaming rape, so he came and shot her assailant. Turned out she was a prostitute and the guy he shot was an undercover cop.

I will defend myself and my family. Intervening when you have no idea who is the good guy and who is the bad guy is a good way to end up in jail or dead. For no good reason:
http://www.stoppingpower.net/commentary/comm_dangers_in_intervention.asp
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/09/robert-farago/dont-shoot-three-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-sav-a-stranger/
Idle

Physicists Discover Universal "Wet-Dog Shake" Rule 97

Posted by samzenpus from the thank-you-science dept.
Dog owners can sleep easy tonight because physicists have discovered how rapidly a wet dog should oscillate its body to dry its fur. Presumably, dogs already know. From the article: "Today we have an answer thanks to the pioneering work of Andrew Dickerson at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and a few buddies. But more than that, their work generates an interesting new conundrum about the nature of shaken fur dynamics. Dickerson and co filmed a number of dogs shaking their fur and used the images to measure the period of oscillation of the dogs' skin. For a labrador retriever, this turns out to be 4.3 Hz."
Image

Google Street View Shoots the Same Woman 43 Times 106

Posted by samzenpus from the get-your-face-out-there dept.
Geoffrey.landis writes "Terry Southgate discovered that his wife Wendy appears on the Google Street View of his neighborhood not once or twice but a whopping 43 times. From the article: 'It seems as if the Street View car simply followed the same route as Wendy and Trixie. However, Wendy was a little suspicious that the car was doing something on the "tricksie" side. Several of the Street View shots show Wendy looking with some concern towards the car that was, well, to put it politely, crawling along the curb. "I didn't know what it was doing. It was just driving round very, very slowly," Wendy told the Sun.' The next best thing to being a movie star — a Street View star!"
PlayStation (Games)

Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3 240

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-blame-ubisoft dept.
Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "
First Person Shooters (Games)

Crytek Plans Free Version of CryENGINE 3 75

Posted by Soulskill from the everybody-gets-an-engine dept.
Develop reports that Crytek, makers of the Far Cry series, the Crysis series, and the game engines behind them, have plans to release a free-to-use version of CryENGINE 3, the software's latest iteration. Quoting: "Unreal vendor Epic Games and Unity have both seen their user-bases mushroom overnight since launching versions of their own engines that, while tied to different royalty rates, are completely free to download and operate. Now the CryEngine 3 group has revealed it wants to tap into this thriving market. The firm's CEO Cevat Yerli told Develop that Crytek already gives away a CryEngine 2 editor to the mod community, but explained that Crytek's expansion strategy stretches beyond. 'We have a very vivid community of users and modders and content creators, and usually that's a great way of unlocking the engine,' he said. ... 'So far that's what we've been offering for free, and it's easy entry into the production environment. [But] we do want to make a standalone free platform that people can run independent of CryEngine that will also be up to speed with the latest engine.'"
Classic Games (Games)

OpenTTD 1.0.0 Released 107

Posted by Soulskill from the and-so-soon dept.
Gmer writes "Eming.com reports that OpenTTD, the open source clone of the Microprose game Transport Tycoon Deluxe, has reached a milestone. OpenTTD 1.0.0 has been released 6 years after work started on the first version, with the help of hundreds of contributors and thousands of testers/players. Over 30 language translations are considered complete, and OpenTTD is available for *BSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows. OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which the player is in control of a transport company and can compete against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea or air."
Security

OpenSSL 1.0.0 Released 105

Posted by Soulskill from the sweet-when-is-2.0 dept.
hardaker writes "After over 11 years of development since the start of the OpenSSL Project (1998-12-23), OpenSSL version 1.0.0 has finally hit the shelves of the free-for-all store."
Games

Can You Fight DRM With Patience? 309

Posted by Soulskill from the napalm-works-better dept.
As modern DRM schemes get more annoying and invasive, the common wisdom is to vote with your wallet and avoid supporting developers and publishers who include such schemes with their games. Or, if you simply must play it, wait a while until outcry and complaints have caused the DRM restrictions to be loosened. But will any of that make game creators rethink their stance? An article at CNet argues that gamers are, in general, an impatient bunch, and that trait combined with the nature of the games industry means that progress fighting DRM will be slow or nonexistent. Quoting: "Increasingly so, the joke seems to be on the customers who end up buying this software when it first comes out. A simple look back at some controversial titles has shown us that after the initial sales come, the publisher later removes the vast majority of the DRM, leaving gamers to enjoy the software with fewer restrictions. ... Still, [waiting until later to purchase the game] isn't a good long-term solution. Early sales are often one of the big quantifiers in whether a studio will start working on a sequel, and if everyone were to wait to buy games once they hit the bargain price, publishers would simply stop making PC versions. There's also no promise that the really heavy bits of DRM will be stripped out at a later date, except for the fact that most publishers are unlikely to want to maintain the cost of running the activation, and/or online verification servers for older software."
Graphics

How To Play HD Video On a Netbook 205

Posted by timothy from the addressing-that-stuttering-problem dept.
Barence writes with some news to interest those with netbooks running Windows: "Netbooks aren't famed for their high-definition video playing prowess, but if you've got about $10 and a few minutes going spare, there is a way to enjoy high-definition trailers and videos on your Atom-powered portable. You need three things: a copy of Media Player Classic Home Cinema, CoreCodec's CoreAVC codec, and some HD videos encoded in AVC or h.264 formats. This blog takes you through the process."
The Media

Linux Action Show Returns 61

Posted by timothy from the for-your-time-on-the-elliptical-machine dept.
BJ writes "The Linux Action Show, the Linux-podcast to end all Linux-podcasts, is returning with their 11th season after over 7 months off the air. Kicking it all off with a live streaming event this Saturday at 5pm. Topics are set to include: Maemo/Moblin merging into Meego, Open Source Nividia drivers with 3D, KDE 4.4 and much, much more."

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