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Quake

Submission + - Open RT project Ray-tracing algorithms available

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ray-tracing is a technique that allowed Peter Jackson to make special effects look convincing in the Lord of the Rings. Now, Daniel Pohl, has used the new algorithms [develped by Professor Philipp Slusallek and co-workers from the University of Saarland] to produce ray-traced versions of the Quake 3 and 4 video games. "It gives much higher image quality in shadows and reflections," said Mr Pohl. "You can even do reflections on reflections on reflections." This is something that would be impossible with traditional rendering techniques. The algorithms are being made available to anyone to use via the Open RT project. Graphics in computer games are typically rendered via a technique known as rasterisation which involves drawing all the elements of a scene using polygons. The scientists have shown that their series of ray-tracing algorithms can run on a high-end PC graphics card.
KDE

Submission + - K3b 1.0 released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: K3b, the CD/DVD burning software for KDE has finally reached the milestone version 1.0. To quote the anouncement: I am proud to announce the release of K3b 1.0. After years and years of development, all the sweat (actually in the summer it can get sticky in front of the screen), all the tears (ok, admittedly, not that many), and all the countless hours I spent on a single application finally we have what I think is worth the big 1. K3b has come a long way since the early days in 1998 when it started as a dummy project for me to learn C++ and Qt development. The reason for that (besides my hacking) is the amazing feedback I got from the open source community and especially all the KDE worshippers. Give yourself a hand. Without all of you K3b would not have lived this long. I also want to thank Mandriva for supporting the K3b development these last few months. Their KDE support makes a big difference. A changelog is also available.
Announcements

Submission + - The Pirate Bay down? ... Again.

Submitted by
jag7720
jag7720 writes: "From the "I want my Stargate SG1 section"...

The worlds most notorious Bittorrent Site "The Pirate Bay" appears to be down... again.

http://piratebay.org/ doesn't load and can't be pinged. Has the Swedish page been busted after all? There doesn't seem to be any news on Internet News pages...."
The Internet

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.
Graphics

Submission + - Rays light up life-like graphics

Submitted by
TheDawgLives
TheDawgLives writes: "BBC News is carying a story of researchers from the University of Saarland in Germany that have developed new ray tracing algorithms that could revolutionize video games.
A video demonstration is also available.

From TFA:
Daniel Pohl, one of the researchers who has worked with Professor Slusallek, has used the algorithms to produce ray-traced versions of the Quake 3 and 4 video games. "It gives much higher image quality in shadows and reflections," said Mr Pohl. "You can even do reflections on reflections on reflections." This is something that would be impossible with traditional rendering techniques. The algorithms are well-suited to the next generation of PC chips that have multiple processing cores inside them. Separate cores could be used to model different rays to make good use of the available computer power, said Mr Pohl. The algorithms are being made available to anyone to use via the Open RT project."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Should a computer algorithm make health decisions?

Submitted by aeoneal
aeoneal writes: Scientific American discusses whether programs or humans are better at estimating the wishes of incapacitated patients. From the article:

Motherboard Knows Best: Should a Computer Make Life-or-Death Decisions? Researchers say computers, using a mathematical formula, can determine the wishes of incapacitated patients as well as—if not better—than their kin.

Just because a computer algorithm is a better predictor, it doesn't then follow that we should use it," says Dan Brock, director of medical ethics at Harvard Medical School. There are many other reasons for human surrogate decision makers, he adds, such as the fact that many patients want their family to have a say in what is perhaps the most important decision of their lives, regardless of accuracy.
From that perspective, if they do develop a highly accurate system for predicting patient wishes (right now it's accurate about two-thirds of the time), the crucial question then seems to be whether the patient's wishes or the family's come first. Arguing that the patient's wish would be to let the family chose seems perilously close to using sophistry to rationalize a desire for a human factor. But what does the /. community think?
Microsoft

Submission + - Creative in Vista-driver apology storm

Submitted by Shemmie
Shemmie writes: Anyone following Creatives progress at creating sound drivers for Vista will have noted it's been a long and convoluted history. Their support forum is filled with angry and confused customers, some of whom have simply given up waiting for fully working driver release. A thread about contacting Customer Support got closed.

One of their moderators apparently apologized to the angry mob for Creatives SNAFU at dealing with this — and promptly had his message, and replies to his message taken down in an apparent "Over-ruled" decision by Creative.

What is going on at Creative?
Space

Submission + - Enormous amount of water ice found on Mars

Submitted by schweini
schweini writes: Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath aprox. 10m of water on average.
Databases

Submission + - Sykpe uses Postgresql as the backend

Submitted by
firefly_blue
firefly_blue writes: "Skype confirmed today that it uses Postgresql successfully for its backend by releasing a number of enhancements they have made for the database. This includes SkyTools used for replication and failover, PgBouncer a lightweight connection pooler and PL/Proxy a language for creating proxy functions that call actual functions from a partitioned database. A quick overview of Postgresql's use in Skype is presented in a white paper."

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