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Microsoft

Halo Reach Leaked To Filesharing Sites 160

Stoobalou writes "What appears to be the full version of Bungie's Halo Reach game has turned up on a number of file sharing sites. The hotly-anticipated multi-player shooter had been hosted on a private area of the Microsoft Live site in order for journalists to preview the release, but Microsoft has admitted that a security breach has meant that pirates have been able to bypass personal download codes given to writers. Disk images of the game are now appearing on a number of public torrent and P2P sites as well as on popular NZB aggregators and Usenet binaries newsgroups." The game isn't due to be released until September 14th. Microsoft is said to be "aggressively pursuing" whoever grabbed the files without their permission.
Science

The Strange Case of Solar Flares and Radioactive Decay Rates 408

DarkKnightRadick writes "Current models for radioactive decay have been challenged by, of all sources, the sun. According to the article, 'On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.' This is important because the rate of decay is very important not just for antique dating, but also for cancer treatment, time keeping, and the generation of random numbers. This isn't a one time measurement, either. 'Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.'"

Comment Re:Why not LED? (Score 2, Informative) 120

Not entirely true. LED backlights are controllable and switch off in banks. This is significant because the backlighting can turn off in areas where there is very dark "black", increasing the contrast ratio quite a bit. With a CCFL backlight it is always on, so you have a backlight bleeding through the dark areas on-screen.

Comment Re:Can't believe they still use pounds (Score 1) 224

I've always been a supporter of defining units of weight/mass with a quantifiable number(# of C-12 atoms for example). A number of people thought themselves so intelligent that they bash the idea of a Kilogram down, yet none have presented a better measurement. It is plain and it is simple, for the time being: You are on Earth. At room temperature, in liquid state and under "typical" atmospheric pressure a litre of water will weigh(fairly accurately) 1 Kilogram. It doesn't matter if you can't tell. It also doesn't matter if you want to know or not. Even if we established a 100% accurate measurement of mass to compare, you still wouldn't use it. Do you have the equipment to count Carbon atoms(example) to see water's mass? No, you'd still be filling a 1 litre bucket of water to set your comparison weight. Or more realistically, you'd be here posting troll comments on /. instead of performing any manner of learning that would require you to know the weight of any particular object. The current kilogram is established as a measurement for everyone to use. Having a SI kilogram based on constituent atoms does nothing for a great deal of average people (read: Slashdot posters). If we keep it as it is, I'll bet you make it through life no differently.

Comment Re:I think all coplay (Score 1) 115

No, it was never officially stated that Halo was a precursor to Marathon and even if it was, no, you can't say it came out for the Macintosh first. It simply did not. Quantumplacet was right. It was being developed for Macintosh. Microsoft saw promise, offered them a load of cash and voila! Xbox1 title.

Comment Hmm... (Score 1) 400

I'd be willing to bet that this has more to do with increasing profit per unit rather than being "green". With the cost of printing those manuals(which, aside from the cardboard cover insert, is the most environmentally friendly portion of a complete game package) reduced, they also substantially reduce shipping weight.

Those savings will not be passed on to the consumer in any way and games will still be $50+

When companies go "green", they don't mean enviro-friendly, they mean money.

Comment Re:It's going to take them a year (Score 1) 76

Bleszinski doesn't matter. None of these so called "rock star" devs are important. They are marketing figures putting a "cool" face on game development. Mr. Bleszinski may be an excellent coder or digital artist, but even if he is hauling his fair share of the labour, he's still just one guy in a list. His "personality" when making public appearances and the like, well...again, he's a talking head for the studio's marketing department. I almost wonder sometimes, do the parties responsible for "images" like Mr. Bleszinski, walk through the office and pick out the most "easy to clean up" or arguably attractive person working on the game and offer them this kind of job; "You can keep pounding out lines of code this week ORRRR you could faux hawk your hair, get some 'hip' clothes on our dollar, take a pay increase of no less than 25%(just for the sake of example) and be our new 'The Guy!!!1!'(again, as example)." I will say this for certain, when you play a Gears of War game on a large screen, with some large audio, it starts smashing your face as soon as you load up the game. If often feels worth it to have had to listen to guys like him even talk in the first place.

Comment While were looking at that spreadsheet... (Score 2, Interesting) 776

In addition to the data on that spreadsheet suggesting that the majority of cases were "older" people, look at the racial breakdown. Not suggesting that it has anything to do with race, per se, but rather that it would be interesting to know how much experience operating a motor vehicle that these folks have. Did they migrate here? Were their licenses just carried over from their originating country or did they have to retrain to the applicable state requirements?

Comment Re:Definitely not priceless. (Score 4, Insightful) 651

Only make $15/hour? I'll assume that you make considerably more than that. If that's the case, you become a bigger loser for trolling around on /. for what "you're worth" versus what "he's worth". He's wasting $15/hour and you are wasting considerably more. When did hourly income become the value of an individual?

Comment Re:when? (Score 1) 398

No no, it's great on the 360. The UI acts exactly as you would expect of it. I would certainly say that it was designed with a controller in mind. Of course, I am the type of person that bought a computer for computing and a game console for games. I keep my 360 wireless PC adapter on the ready, in case I felt the need to play a game on my PC.

Comment Re:So good it's a verb (Score 1) 289

Recently Adobe and Apple have been an odds. I doubt that factors in to this article though. Interestingly enough, the "about" screens in the article seem to suggest that the various versions, up to 5.0 were being run on a PowerPC. Perhaps the author has blended provided Apple about screens and windows UI screens? I wouldn't say the article focused on the Windows version anyway. That would be an assumption if you had only looked at the pretty pictures. To read the article, they is very little mention of platform, except where necessary to build the history of the product.
Mozilla

Mozilla Debates Whether To Trust Chinese CA 276

At his Freedom to Tinker blog, Ed Felten has a thoughtful, accessible piece on the debate at Mozilla about whether Firefox, by default, should trust a Chinese certificate authority (as it has since October). Felten explains in clear language why this is significant, and therefore controversial. An excerpt: "To see why this is worrisome, let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that CNNIC were a puppet of the Chinese government. Then CNNIC's status as a trusted CA would give it the technical power to let the Chinese government spy on its citizens' 'secure' web connections. If a Chinese citizen tried to make a secure connection to Gmail, their connection could be directed to an impostor Gmail site run by the Chinese government, and CNNIC could give the impostor a cert saying that the government impostor was the real Gmail site."

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