Arctic Dragon - Slashdot User

Submission + - Carmack: "DX9 is the best API I've worked with

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:26PM

An anonymous reader writes: In an interview for GameInformer, John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame discusses various aspects of game programming for the current generation of graphics hardware. Surprisingly, he also asserts that Microsoft's DirectX9 is the best graphics API he's ever worked with; this goes contrary to his famous comments about the superiority of OpenGL from a couple of years ago. Is Linux gaming about to lose one of its most prominent supporters?

Submission + - Normal Work Attire?

Submitted by

billdar

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:08PM

billdar writes: "- Business Suit
— Shirt, Tie, & Slacks
— Pollo Shirt & Jeans
— Work Shirt, Dickies, & Steel Toes
— T-Shirt and Shorts
— Nothing, and proud of it!
— Nothing, not so proud...
— Cowboyneal Under-roos"

Submission + - 200,000 Brits say no to satellite road tolls

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:08PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "As of the 10th of January 2007, over 205,000 UK residents have signed an online petition against the government's plans for road pricing. The plans involve fitting a GPS or similar satellite tracking device to every vehicle, and charging up to £1.34 ($2.60 USD) per mile for drivers to use the roads. Although road tolls are a rarity in the UK, britons currently pay among the highest petrol prices in the world, currently over £0.849/Litre ($6.18/US gal). It is feared that road pricing will only increase these costs, along with the attendant privacy concerns about every car in the country being tracked 24/7. The Assiciation of Chief Police Officers have displayed an interest in the ability to remotely disable cars, and the system would have the potential to act as a nationwide speed trap."

Submission + - Preventing a Brute Force or Dictionary Attack

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @02:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: A comprehensive article on how to prevent web applications brute force attacks: "To understand and then combat a brute force attack, also known as a dictionary attack, we must start by understanding why it might be an appealing tool for a hacker. To a hacker, anything that must be kept under lock and key is probably worth stealing. If your Web site (or a portion of it) requires a user to login and be authenticated, then the odds are good that a hacker has tried to break into it."

Submission + - Living the Good Life, Leaving Google Behind

Submitted by

inetsee

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @02:25PM

inetsee writes: "A thousand people a day are sending their resumes in to Google, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle, 100 of Google's first 300 workers have left. These are the people who made a lot of money when Google went public, and they have the freedom to do pretty much what they want to. Some have decided to take it easy, but others have gone after new challenges. Google's chef is opening his own restaurant, Olana Khan has joined Kiva.org, a non-profit that makes micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, and Aydin Senkut has become an angel investor, looking to find (and fund) the next big thing. The article describes several other former Google employees and what they are doing now with the freedom that Google's success has given them."

Submission + - Intel makes 8-core processing the new playground

Submitted by Joe The Dragon on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @02:11PM

Joe The Dragon writes: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5622# cmt95037

Intel makes 8-core processing the new playground

"At CES 2007 today, Intel announced a proof-of-concept PC designed specifically to counter AMD's 4x4 platform for gamers. Dubbed the "V8" system, Intel demonstrated a system running on a pair of quad-core Kentsfield Xeon processors for a total of eight physical cores.

The system runs at 2.4GHz utilizing a 1066MHz system bus and is loaded with FB-DIMM memory. The graphics card is supported by a single NVIDIA 8800GTX. According to Intel, the "V8" system dished out a score of 6089 on 3DMark CPU bench.

DailyTech previously reported on AMD's 4x4 platform, which was later given an official name called Quad FX. AMD broke news of its dedication to the gaming community early in 2006 and received good praise from the general enthusiast community. Dual-processor systems have not been as popular as they were several years ago due to the advent of multi-core processors and the cost and complexity of the systems in general.

Unlike AMD's Quad FX platform, Intel's "V8" system will require FB-DIMMs while Quad FX will work with regular unbuffered memory. The AMD Quad FX platform can also support multiple GeForce video cards in SLI configuration, while the "V8" is currently limited to a single graphics card.

Despite the enourmous amount of processing power packed into Intel's "V8" system, AMD is not far away from releasing something along the lines of an "8x8" system utilizing quad-core Opteron processors. AMD demonstrated its Barcelona in November of 2006 and mentioned that the new Opterons would be making a showing in mid-2007."

compared to myriad of workstation boards that are available for the Opteron and not the QuadFX special purpose board. There are even four socket boards available with multiple PCIe 16 sockets for the Opteron if you are inclined to count cores and the board for TYAN can be expanded to 8 sockets the intel chip sets suck next to nvidia ones

The duel Opteron workstation boards have x8 x16 x8 x16 pci-e, pci-x and some even have on board sas and they have SLI

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thundern4250qe.h tml
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thundern6650w.ht ml
http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce_pro_workstation. html

what does intel have? x16 x4 pci-e and pci-x with some pci-e links used by the chipset link.

Submission + - Why is RAM so much more expensive than flash?

Submitted by

johnmrowe

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @02:07PM

johnmrowe writes: "Crucial quote $37 for a 2GB Secure Digital card but $626 for 2GB RAM for a Mac Pro — seventeen times the price! We all know about economies of scale but this is something else. Why is RAM so much more expensive than flash? Is there some fundamental difference in the cost of manufacture or did they catastrophically over-switch from RAM to flash production? And can we expect to see RAM prices coming down as manufacturers switch back?

Surely this must be effecting everyone.

John"

Submission + - Harrison Ford Turned Down Han Solo Role

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @12:44PM

eldavojohn writes: "It's being widely reported that Harrison Ford turned down a £20 million deal to play Han Solo once again in a George Lucas spin off of Star Wars. The source of this information seems to be a tabloid called bangshowbiz. Harrison was approached by Lucas with two roles but instead opted for the same amount to play Indiana Jones for the fourth time. Could the spin off centered on the rugged Han Solo save the Star Wars franchise from its prequels or would it have been another mediocre release disappointing demanding fans? I for one certainly hope Lucas refrains from attempting to fill Solo's shoes with another actor."

Submission + - Outlook 2007 breaks HTML Rendering in Email

Submitted by

SpiritGod21

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @12:41PM

SpiritGod21 writes: "It looks like Microsoft has chosen to take the path less traveled once again and completely break from the trend of supporting more with newer versions. Its latest rendition of Outlook 2007, set to hit shelves at the end of the month with Office 2007, will no longer fully support HTML or CSS rendering. Instead of using Internet Explorer 7, Outlook will view email using Word 2007 and extremely limited functionality. From the article:

In short, unless your HTML emails are very, very simple, you're going to run into problems with Outlook 2007, and in most cases the only solution to those problems will be to reduce the complexity of your HTML email design to accommodate Outlook's limited feature set."

Submission + - IE-derived Chinese Browser challenges Firefox

Submitted by crush on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @10:19AM

crush writes: Maxthon holds 30% of the Chinese browser market and is built on top of IE's layout engine. A Linux Journal article (by Glynn Moody) reports on the challenges this non-Free browser presents to Firefox by offering many of Firefox's features and offering compatibility with IE. Firefox apparently is a negligible presence in the important Chinese internet community.

Journal Journal: How truly open is Flash? Do we need "Open Flash"? 2

Journal by nickull on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:14PM

This is a post made by David Mendels that inspired me to get this message out. I too have noticed that a few people Still perceive Flash as a proprietary technology. If you are one of those, read this then ask yourself the two questions at the end. I had a completely different view of Flash before Adobe and Macromedia merged. David writes: (Some basic points)

The Flash programming language (ActionScript) is 100% ECMASCript, a s

Journal Journal: Doubling Disk Space on a Mac Book Pro

Journal by gbulmash on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:46PM

Just got the LaCie Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive and put it through its paces on my MacBook Pro. I actually got speeds a bit faster than reported by cNet's review.

Submission + - YouTube ban reversed in Brazil

Submitted by

xirusmom

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:32PM

xirusmom writes: "From reuters: A Brazilian judge reversed his order to ban the YouTube site in Brazil. MTV Brasil, where the model in the center of the controversy, Daniela Cicarelli, hosts a show, has received thousands of emails of protest. A website urging people to boycott the modelwas set up, and a blogger had an online petition signed by around 7500 people. The ban on the sex video itself is still valid."

Submission + - The Home Server Cometh

Submitted by narramissic on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:39PM

narramissic writes: Apart from Apple's 'I'm cooler than you' ad campaign, you don't hear much about the Windows versus Mac battle these days. The reason: Today's battle isn't about 'what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system,' argues Dan Blacharski in a recent article.

Submission + - Mac OS X Versus Vista: The Podcast

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: As a follow on to InformationWeek's Mac OS X Versus Vista review, they've posted a podcast with review author and Mac advocate John Welch, who talks about what's happening at Macworld and his reasoning for favoring OS X over Vista, which provoked so much comment here on Slashdot.

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