Knacklappen - Slashdot User

Submission + - Beyond "KDE vs. GNOME" (earthweb.com) 1

Submitted by

jammag

on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:32PM

jammag writes: "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the "better" Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their contrasting development approaches and concludes that KDE is moving far ahead. "In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator." In contrast, "you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long-term, it has done what was necessary to thrive." If the phrase 'no pain, no gain,' applies to development, KDE is leaving the staid GNOME in the dust."

Submission + - Vision Improves with Violent Video Games

Submitted by

Ponca City, We love you

on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:25PM

Ponca City, We love you writes: "According to a new study, people who played fighting games on their PCs became up to a 58 percent better at perceiving fine contrast differences, an important aspect of eyesight. The breakthrough is significant because it was previously thought that the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background, called the contrast sensitivity function (CSF), could not be improved. The ability to discern slight differences in shades of gray, or contrast sensitivity, is the primary limiting factor in how well one sees, says Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. "If you are driving at dusk with light fog it could make the difference between seeing the car in front of you or not seeing it," says Bavelier. Volunteers in the study played intensively for 50 hours over nine weeks with either Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty 2, and the results were compared with another group who played "The Sims 2," which is richly visual, but does not require as much visual-motor coordination. The new finding suggests action video games can be used as training devices as a useful complement to eye-correction techniques since it may teach the brain's visual cortex to make better use of the information it receives. "Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery--somehow changing the optics of the eye," says Bavelier. "But we've found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.""

Submission + - Pirate Bay comes to Facebook (mashable.com)

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Sunday March 29, 2009 @03:54PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "According to a report I just read in Mashable, Pirate Bay is coming to Facebook. Writer Ben Parr says that The Pirate Bay site now includes links under torrents to 'Share on Facebook'. Once posted to a profile, the Facebook member's friends can click the link on Facebook to begin the download right away, provided he or she already has a torrenting client installed. I just hope people do not use this feature to download copyrighted materials which are not authorized to be downloaded, or at least not materials copyrighted to litigation-happy RIAA Big 4 record labels. No doubt, if their song files were downloaded through this method, the record companies would sit back for awhile, derive profit from the promotional excitement generated for their dying industry, and then — armed with Facebook's data — sue the pants off all the hapless Facebook users who fell for it."

Submission + - US Military unlikely to intercept NK missile. (foxnews.com)

Submitted by rock56501 on Sunday March 29, 2009 @03:41PM

rock56501 writes: US Defense Secretary Gates had an interview with Fox News [Fox News] today in regards to the upcoming suspected North Korean missile test. When asked whether there's anything the United States can do about this, he flatly responds 'No.' When asked whether the US may attempt to shoot down the missile, he simply responds 'I think if we had an aberrant missile, one that was headed for Hawaii, that looked like it was headed for Hawaii or something like that, we might consider it.'

Submission + - SD Card Adapter for Dreamcast Released (dcemu.co.uk)

Submitted by Budgie on Sunday March 29, 2009 @01:08PM

Budgie writes: The Dreamcast may have died years ago but the homebrew community keeps on going strong and this weekend Chui the coder of many emulators for the Dreamcast which include emulators for Snes, Mame, Amiga, Atari ST has announced the first SD Card adapter for the Dreamcast which finally brings a storage option to the console, the adapter supports up to 2GB SD Cards and will allow the user to store emulators, games and roms etc on the card to be used as a hard drive with decent access times, full details are found in english and Spanish.

Submission + - Researchers identify brain activity related to pha (examiner.com)

Submitted by mmmscience on Sunday March 29, 2009 @10:25AM

mmmscience writes: http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m3d29-Researchers-identify-brain-activity-related-to-phantom-limbs Researchers in Switzerland think they had identified the regions of the brain responsible for creating phantom limbs and the senses that go along with them. Scientists studied a stroke victim who claimed that the phantom limb of her now-paralyzed left arm could do a number of things a normal limb could do, including "scratch an itch on her head, with an actual sense of relief."

Submission + - ISC DLV open to all for rapid DNSSEC deployment

Submitted by on Sunday March 29, 2009 @09:45AM

An anonymous reader writes: If you aren't happy to wait until 2011 for DNSSEC, it is now possible to add your keys to the ISC DLV with the launch of a new web-based DLV interface. Anyone can now sign a zone, submit the key on the ISC web site, and immediately benefit from a secure chain to all DLV users, bypassing political delays getting parent zones signed.

Submission + - UK libel law is a global threat to web free speech (opendemocracy.net)

Submitted by uctpjac on Sunday March 29, 2009 @09:39AM

uctpjac writes: London media lawyer Emily MacManus argues that UK libel law has three features which make it the "defamation tourism" capital of the world and a serious threat to web free speech. First, there is no free speech presumption in the UK as there is, for example, in the US. Second, every access of a web page is considered to be a separate act of publication in the UK (unlike the US, where "original publication" holds). Third, "no-win-no-fee" libel litigation is now allowed in the UK. If any blog, anywhere, publishes something you'd like taken down, threaten libel action in the UK: no one except the super-rich can afford to even take these cases to court, so media lawyers advise publishers to "take it down, take it down quickly, take it down again". There's not much chance that the judges will move the law any time soon because they are just not seeing the cases to make precedent over.

Submission + - A good, or bad, month in Ebola research

Submitted by RockDoctor on Saturday March 28, 2009 @09:31PM

RockDoctor writes: Ebola is a nasty, scary virus.
Needle-stick injuries are scary on general principles.
Needle-stick injuries with a needle that you know you've just used for handling Ebola is a bit more than slightly scary.
Being an active researcher on one of the nastier virii out there ... well, that's going to make you sleep easier after your needle-stick injury, isn't it?

That's a down side. On the upside, AP are reporting (via Yahoo) that rapid action to treat the injured medical researcher with an experimental vaccine seems to have been successful. The 21-day incubation period of this really nasty virus hasn't passed yet, but the researcher (as yet un-named) is past the peak period for expression of infection.
Whether this unanticipated early test of the vaccine will move the availability of bulk vaccine forwards is too early too say, but one can hope.
Have a read of the "bleeding out" descriptions in "The Hot Zone" (ISBN: 0385427107) if you want a little light bedtime reading.

Comment Alternative ending in Max Payne 2 (Score 4, Interesting) 73

by Knacklappen on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @03:38AM (#27308827) Attached to: <em>Max Payne 3</em> Announced For Next Winter

Hmmm, I wonder how this connects to the alternative ending in Max Payne 2? I was very glad to see that after having fought through all three difficultiy levels, you got rewarded with an alternative ending in which the bullet missed Mona Sax's heart. She doesn't die, they kiss and the whole game ends on a cautiously optimistic tone. I always felt that this was how the game was supposed to end, that this was the ultimate reward for Max: finally a slim chance of happiness. Now they seem to disregard this and cast poor Max once again into darkness and dispair. Hmmm... I don't know...

Reclaiming Oil Rigs As Oceanic Eco-Resorts 124

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 19, 2009 @03:00PM from the they're-prettier-than-they-look dept.

Mike writes "Here's an innovative reuse for those old abandoned oil rigs littering the ocean — convert them into eco resorts. Morris Architects' Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a beacon of sustainability, re-imagining an iconic source of dirty energy as an eco-haven that generates all of its power from renewable sources."

Don't Like EULAs? Get Your Cat To Agree To Them 874

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @02:43PM from the my-cat-toy-is-a-model-m dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Anne Loucks built a device which, when her cat steps on it, can click the 'I Agree' button of a EULA. Who knows what the lawyers will make of this sort of madness. Can a cat make a legal agreement? Does it need to be of legal age? She lures the cat onto the device, and the cat steps on it of its own free will. Anyway, folks who hate EULAs now have another tool to make the lawyers freak out."

Collective Intelligence in Action 53

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @02:03PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

lamaditx writes "The book Collective Intelligence in Action shows you how to apply theory from Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining to your business. The goal is to create systems which make use of data created by groups of people — i.e. social networks — and abstract from these to gain new or additional information. Some of you might think "just another kind of Web 2.0." This is one application you might think of, but the input and output format do not matter that much. You can use these methods anywhere as long as the amount of data is big enough. You will find some examples related to the latest web technologies to explain methods, but the code is rather generic. Also, you won't find a lot disturbing details about HTML, HTTP and the like." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.

Lie Detector Company Threatens Critical Scientists With Suit 367

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 29, 2009 @05:18PM from the slapp-ing-them-around dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish newspaper DN reports that the Israeli company Nemesysco has sent letters to researchers at the University of Stockholm, threatening legal action if they do not stop publishing findings (Google translation). An article called 'Charlatanry in forensic speech science: A problem to be taken seriously' was pulled by the publisher after threats of a libel lawsuit." Online translations can be a little wonky; if your Swedish is as bad as mine, this English-language article describes the situation well.

AMD Adds OpenGL 3.0 Support To Graphics Drivers 102

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 29, 2009 @02:23PM from the stars-are-aligning dept.

arcticstoat writes "Just a few months after The Khronos Group unveiled the Open GL 3.0 spec last year, AMD has included full support for the new API in its first WHQL driver of 2009 — Catalyst 9.1. OpenGL 3.0 requires DirectX 10-level hardware, such as AMD's Radeon HD series of GPUs. However, unlike Direct3D 10, OpenGL 3.0's features can be enabled on both Windows XP and Vista, as well as Linux and Mac OS, which could be a bonus for game developers looking for a broad base of customers. The Khronos Group claims that OpenGL 3.0 has a 'rough feature parity' with Direct3D 10, and it provides Shader Model 4.0 support, including features such as the Geometry Shader. The Khronos Group also says that the new API will interoperate with the GPGPU API OpenCL, which could allow OpenGL 3.0 to compete with the Compute Shader promised in Microsoft's DirectX 11 API."

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