Tofystedeth - Slashdot User

Submission + - Who said Guitar Hero knock-offs couldn't rock? (adgamesonline.com)

Submitted by

The Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @04:26PM

The Anonymous Coward writes: "Flash has always been a humble platform for game development. There have been a couple hits, but they're hard to find in the great ocean of misses. With the advent of Adobe Flash and a new scripting language, can we hope that the masses will finally start to churn out some games worthy of the console?
Guitar Hero addicts (and zombie-killing fanatics) need to look no further than "We Are Legend", an original and fairly addictive game that combines the furious button-mashing of rhythm-based games with some interesting RPG twists. And a whole lot of blood, chainsaws, and zombie-explosions. Purists can pick up their keyboard and use wield it like a five-string. With everything from an over-the-hill Jill Valentine to a zombie-killing hyena and a backup drummer that shears away zombie faces with a metal grinder, this game has promise."

Submission + - Sun racks fall over, keep ticking (systemhelden.com)

Submitted by

RomulusNR

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @03:23PM

RomulusNR writes: "German blog Systemhelden (System Heroes) reports a story of a raised floor tile giving way under two loaded Sun racks, which toppled over. The admins have no idea when it happened, because everything kept running. Sun techs came in and found only a single failed disk drive. (Via c0t0d0s0, which covers it in English.)"

Submission + - EU to change definition of "open standard"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @12:34PM

An anonymous reader writes: The EU is considering to change the definition of "open standards". It has a consultation process that is not publicized at all. Please submit opinions in favor of open standards, or else we will suddenly wake up to having lost a very important battle. On the form, ask for the use of open standards, as defined by the European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services (Version 1.0, 2004, page 9) for all information, be it in documents, video, sounds, etc. published on the websites of the European Commission. 34

Submission + - EFF Backs Mother in Suite Against Universal Music (eff.org)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @07:11AM

eldavojohn writes: "Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) is being sued by the EFF for forcing Stephanie Lenz's 29-second recording that shows her son hopping and bopping to the Prince song "Let's Go Crazy." She reports that she put the video online to share with family & friends and describes this as a legal threat preventing her from sharing precious moments with relatives. The EFF sees this as a blatant disregard of fair use and free speech rights that any citizen holds and is asking a federal court to protect it. Universal, at one point seemed to reach a deal with YouTube, although this apparently was not made with the customer in mind, is Universal's "Take my ball and play elsewhere" attitude permanent? I wonder if the artist himself, Prince, will make a public announcement?"

Submission + - Mass Stalking Organized On Facebook

Submitted by

Jack Action

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @11:31PM

Jack Action writes: "Police in Cambridge, Ontario are investigating a 700-hundred member Facebook group that was dedicated to harassing and posting humiliating photos of a black, apparently homeless woman. Called "Obeeba Sightings" (the name group administers gave to the woman), Facebook members called the woman racist and sexually explict names, and called for her to be run over by a car and put in a trash compactor. In their response to the incident, Cambridge police indicated Facebook cooperated fully with them in their investigation to the point of handing over IP addresses for all those involved in the group; at which point Facebook shut down the group. Police say it is the worst case of online harassment they have ever seen.

Recent research indicates Facebook is homogeneous even by the standards of the internet, and that members of social networks are more likely to "cyber-bully." Is this a sign that cyber-bulling will get worse as social networks make themselves more like-minded and exclusive? Should companies like Facebook be held responsible for the bad behaviour of their members? Or is this just the nature of distance and anonymity on the internet?"

Submission + - Google Apps Buggy Lately?

Submitted by on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @11:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: I administer two unrelated domains that use Google Apps for e-mail (thats where you basically use G-mail but with your own domain name) and over the last week I've received an alarming number of reports from users that the service appears to be broken. Upon going to their Start page, the users get the message "Information is temporarily unavailable" under E-mail and when they try click on the E-mail link they get taken to a vanilla G-mail login page (which doesn't support logging in with a Google Apps accounts). Did Google upgrade the Apps with broken software or something? Either way, I've seen the problem myself and it doesn't appear to be going away.

Submission + - Computer waste fuels toxic trade (itmanagersjournal.com)

Submitted by

nanday

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @10:24PM

nanday writes: "Do you know what happens to your used computer equipment after it has been discarded? The answer may surprise you. Even if you have tried to recycle it, your old hardware often gets shipped to a developing nation in direct violation of international law. Useful components are then extracted — without safety precautions — by locals earning pennies a day and who are exposed to a range of hazardous toxins that include lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated flame retardants. Though slated to be banned over a decade ago, the practice continues and seems to be growing. North America, Japan, and South Korea are among the worst offenders. Solutions exist, and free software is a small part of them, but implementing them remains a painfully slow process."

Submission + - Mozilla admits Firefox is flawed just like IE (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by jdelator on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @09:09PM

jdelator writes: In a public mea culpa, Mozilla Corp.'s chief security officer acknowledged today that Firefox includes the same flaw that the company called a "critical vulnerability" in Internet Explorer during a two-week ruckus over responsibility for a Windows zero-day bug.

"Over the weekend, we learned about a new scenario that identifies ways that Firefox could also be used as the entry point," said Window Snyder of Mozilla. "While browsing with Firefox, a specially crafted URL could potentially be used to send bad data to another application.

"We thought this was just a problem with IE," Snyder continued. "It turns out, it is a problem with Firefox as well."

Submission + - By 2048 all seafood species projected to collapse (scitizen.com)

Submitted by

Undead_Kangaroo

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @05:20PM

Undead_Kangaroo writes: "Boris Worm, an Assistant Professor in Marine Conservation Biology at the Biology Department of Dalhousie University in Halifax is reporting that as of last year, 29% of fish and seafood species had collapsed, that is, their catch had declined by 90%, and that all fish and seafood species were projected to collapse by 2048. This finding was reported in the 3 November issue of the journal Science."

Submission + - GOATSE Picture Shown In YouTube Debate

Submitted by

Penguinshit

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @02:15PM

Penguinshit writes: "What makes the Internet so great, beyond showing a glimpse of a confusing world to millions of mouth-breathers? The answer, of course, is GOATSE (relax, this isn't THAT link...). One of those lame YouTube questions featured a split-second image of the horrible anus. As of this time, it is unclear as to how many Americans witnessed the outrage, but there are reports of as many as 200,000 phone calls made to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reporting the obscenity. CNN has yet to make an official statement regarding the matter, but a top spokesman was reportedly overheard denouncing the incident as "despicable."

The story is being reported in several aggregators and blogs."

Submission + - MySQL CEO says open source is unstoppable

Submitted by StonyandCher on Monday July 23, 2007 @06:59PM

StonyandCher writes: Despite a growing acceptance of open-source software, MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, said Monday in a keynote speech at the first-ever Ubuntu Live Conference, that there are also ongoing threats to open source development. Those threats, he told attendees, come from proprietary software companies such as Microsoft, which can spread criticism and doubt — backed by their legal and economic might — to push proprietary products.

"Microsoft can use [its] money in other ways to threaten free and open-source software, and I'm sure that they have," Mickos said. "But I think we will see less of that in the future because they've done it and it hasn't helped them."

"...I'm not too worried," Mickos said. "This open source movement is so strong that nothing can stop it anymore."

Submission + - Has audio gone about as fur as it can go?

Submitted by dpbsmith on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:40PM

dpbsmith writes: I was listening to a CD remastered from a 1972 recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and I was thinking to my self "1972? Really? That sounds pretty damn good." Then I was listening on my iPod to a 1957 recording of the Boston Symphony that I had recorded off the air in analog FM with my RadioShark, and I was thinking to myself "1957? Really? That sounds pretty damn good."

I'd summarize the history of audio over the last fifty years by saying that from the forties to the mid-fifties, what happened was magnetic tape recording, and "hi-fi," i.e. high fidelity becoming available to any well-heeled, knowledgeable audiophile. What happened in the sixties was two-channel stereophonic sound. What happened in the seventies was the elimination of tape hiss, through direct-to-disk, Dolby, and digital recording.

What happened in the eighties, nineties, and this decade was... nothing much, as far as actual sound quality. The big advance was that integrated circuits, digital audio, rare earth magnets for speakers, offshore manufacture changed changed the population that got to hear mid-fi sound. Today anyone who wanders into Best Buy and spends $500-$1000 dollars will just automatically get a quality of sound that only serious audiophiles in the 1970s got to hear. (The people who bought expensive prepackaged "hi-fis" and "stereos" during the 1960s and 70s got crap in a pretty cabinet).

I know I'm going to get flamed by the high-end fans, but I still say that except for the advances represented by stereophonic sound and the elimination of analog tape hiss, everything else has been subtleties appreciated only by cognoscenti. The acceptance of compressed digital audio and the apparent market failure of SACD and DVA would seem to support this.

So, is that all there is?

Can anyone imagine a future advance in audio, impossible now due to cost or technical factors, that would produce an improvement in sound so dramatic that it would make the ordinary lay listener say "wow?" What would it be? Wavefront reconstruction? Headphones that sense head movement and rotate the stereo sound image in the opposite direction (so as to keep it stable?)Cheap cochlear implants for people without hearing deficiencies that would extend hearing up to 30 kHz?

Submission + - This asteroid is still coming! (associatedcontent.com) 1

Submitted by

BigBadJohnny

on Monday July 23, 2007 @05:00PM

BigBadJohnny writes: "http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/156218/as teroid_apophis_formerly_2002_ny40.html Apophis, a "near miss" on Aug. 17th and 18th, 2006, is again due in 2029 (Friday, April 13), and will pass, closer than the August 2006 pass, within the orbits of our communication satellites. Enough scientists are working on this potential cataclysmic episode to staff 1/6 of the McDonalds "fast food" restaurants in the world! More info? read the article, at Associated Content!"

Submission + - Making tomorrow's computers from a pencil trace (nanowerk.com)

Submitted by hakaii on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:42PM

hakaii writes: Graphene nanoelectronics: A key discovery at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could help advance the role of graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics. As copper interconnects get smaller, the copper's resistance increases and its ability to conduct electricity degrades. This means fewer electrons are able to pass through the copper successfully, and any lingering electrons are expressed as heat. This heat can have negative effects on both a computer chip's speed and performance. Researchers in both industry and academia are looking for alternative materials to replace copper as interconnects. Graphene could be a possible successor to copper because of metallic graphene's excellent conductivity. Even at room temperature, electrons pass effortlessly, near the speed of light and with little resistance, through metallic graphene. This would almost ensure a graphene interconnect would stay much cooler than a copper interconnect of the same size. More: http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=2262.php

Submission + - Researchers create 'rubbery metal'

Submitted by Space_donkey on Monday July 23, 2007 @04:26PM

Space_donkey writes: Researchers at Virginia Tech have developed a new type of metal that also has the vibration-dampening properties of rubber. That's according to a patent filing discovered by New Scientist. Ultimately, it might be used in aircraft engines and other systems that experience a lot of vibration. In the shorter-term it could also be seen in sports equipment such as tennis rackets and baseball bats.

Slashdot Top Deals