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Nintendo

Submission + - UK Courts rule Nintendo DS SD Card readers illegal (bbc.co.uk)

CheShACat writes: The UK law court has today ruled that SD Card readers for Nintendo DS are illegal, finding 2 vendors guilty of selling "Game copiers". The ruling by Justice Floyd is quoted as saying "The economic effect on Nintendo of the trade in these devices is substantial as each accused device can store and play copies of many Nintendo DS games [...] The mere fact that the device can be used for a non-infringing purpose is not a defence."

No word in the article as to what law in particular they were found to have broken, nor of the penalty the vendors are facing, but this looks like bad news for all kinds of hardware mod, on any platform, that would enable homebrew users to bypass vendor locks.

Comment Re:Rubber-banding (Score 1) 404

I agree with this; similarly if a game is too hard then a player might find they have purchased content (later levels) to which they are denied access. Granted, this is through their own mediocrity or lack of commitment to attain the relevant skill level, but i think that every player should have the opportunity to play through all the content that they have paid for within the context of how much work that particular person are prepared to put in to achieve it.

Dara O'Briain makes the same point on Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3aHvPG6H8

Comment Re:captain obvious (Score 1) 366

Not true at all. While these notes are technically not legal tender in England (technically they are promissory notes from external banks), they are treated as such by banks and retailers, and any note that is a denomination of pounds sterling is universally accepted. So "for all practical purposes", they are indeed useful.

Comment Re:In before the morons (Score 1) 438

Maybe because the browsers Google, Apple, KDE and Gnome include by default are all built atop third party, open source rendering engines that try to comply to web standards; the OS providers themselves have no hand in forcing or attempting to force (whether deliberate or accidental) the propriety or direction of the web and their rendering process is completely transparent. (!whoosh, fwiw; it just seemed appropriate to reply here)

Comment Re:Halfway Competent (Score 1) 665

Except any "large corporate environment" should have commoditised the desktop PC long ago, with a managed desktop image, roaming profiles, etc. making rebuild (or even re-image) the only software-based repair that ever needs doing to a desktop; hardware repairs would be completed under warranty by third party engineers.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Google Announce Chrome OS Plans

Neil writes: "The official Google Blog features an announcement this morning that the company is going ahead with plans to develop the Chrome browser into a fully-fledged operating system distribution, targeted at x86 and ARM netbooks. The project is separate from Android, but is also based on a Linux kernel and will be open sourced. It is lated for release to consumers in the second half of 2010."

Comment Re:open or closed ecosystems (Score 1) 497

It's like teaching a programming class in D--yeah, the language is nice, but it's not what people use.

This is a lousy example that works against you. As many programmers have, I learned one programming language (Java) at Uni and have *never* used it since. I have since, however, worked in asp, c, c++, c#, asp.net, perl, sh, vb, vbscript, ruby, python... and probably more that I can't remember; none of these ever presented any problems to me, nor should they to any real programmer, regardless of previous experience.

The point, as many other people have been saying, is that if the principles are taught well, rather than procedure, then the platform becomes absolutely irrelevant.
PC Games (Games)

Crayon Physics Combines Science and Puzzles 78

IamAHack writes "NPR covered a new game that seems like it would have great appeal to Slashdot readers: Crayon Physics. Quoting: 'A new computer game went on sale this week. It's not a blockbuster like Halo or World of Warcraft. There's no first-person shooting, no sports, no guitar, no microphone. Instead, there's a crayon. The game is Crayon Physics Deluxe. It's a simple, mesmerizing game created by a 25-year-old independent games designer from Finland named Petri Purho. "It's a game where your crayon drawings come to life,' Purho tells NPR's Melissa Block. 'You draw stuff and your drawings behave physically correctly. As soon as you release the last button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing."' A demo is available, and Opposable Thumbs has a review of the game."
Portables

How Do You Manage Your SD Card Library? 485

txmadman writes "Like a lot of my colleagues and all of my three children, I have several SD , mini-SD, and micro-SD cards for various purposes: cameras, cell phones, my laptop, etc. These things are handy to have around, offer easy and significant storage, but are very easily lost. We have also have run into some instances where it wasn't clear whose SD card was whose, and have also started to see a need for a storage mechanism. I have seen SD card 'wallets' and such, but have never seen anyone actually use one. So: How do you manage and keep track of your SD cards?"

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