Comment Some lawsuits are only for entertainment factor (Score 1) 225
had enough of Boring stuff for today - this one cheered me up
Cooking With Your USB Ports 188
tekgoblin writes "Wow, I would never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides, but someone did. A standard port provides 5V of power, give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate, but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not, it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly."
GOG.com Not Really Gone 276
gspr writes "On Sunday, Slashdot and many others reported that DRM-free games site GOG.com was shutting down. Now the site is back, revealing that it was all a hoax. According to the site: 'Now it's time we put an end to all the speculations once and for all. It's true that we decided that we couldn't keep GOG.com the way it was so we won't. As you probably know by now, GOG.com is entering its new era with an end of the two-years beta stage and we're launching a brand new GOG.com with new, huge releases.' So it was all an advertising stunt."
More Devs Going Indie, To Gamers' Benefit 137
Wired is running a feature about how a growing number of game developers are abandoning jobs at major publishers and studios and taking their experience to the indie scene instead. Quoting:
"They’re veterans of the triple-A game biz with decades of experience behind them. They’ve worked for the biggest companies and had a hand in some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters. They could work on anything, but they’ve found creative fulfillment splitting off into a tiny crew and doing their own thing. They’re using everything they’ve learned working on big-budget epics and applying it to small, downloadable games. The good news for gamers is that, as the industry’s top talents depart the big studios and go into business for themselves, players are being treated to a new class of indie game. They’re smaller and carry cheaper price tags, but they’re produced by industry veterans instead of thrown together by B teams and interns. Most importantly, unlike big-budget games that need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to turn a profit, these indie gems reveal the undiluted creative vision of their makers."
Study Says Your Personality Doesn't Change After 1st Grade 221
A study authored by Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, says that our personalities stay pretty much the same from early childhood all the way through old age. From the article: "Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later. They examined four personality attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one's importance)." This must explain my overriding need to be first captain when we pick kickball teams at the office.
Wine 1.2 Released 427
David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."
State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574
Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"
Open Source Developer Knighted 101
unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster 197
MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."
Google Buys AI Social Search Service Aardvark 41
eldavojohn writes "MIT's Tech Review is covering an acquisition it finds very interesting. Google (which recently announced Buzz) has acquired Aardvark. The review covered Aardvark and the artificial intelligence it uses in its searches in 2009."
Comment links to photos without ads (Score 1) 154
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http://technologizer.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/atari_tablet_13.jpg
Comment Re:It's things like this that bug me about GNOME (Score 0, Troll) 71
Well, let's deal with these issues:
Everything in the software world is patent infested, but in this case the Microsoft Open Specification Promise covers OOXML 1.0. It may not cover future versions, you may not trust them, but there it is. I am less concerned about Microsoft-owned patents than those owned by patent trolls. We're actually in a similar position to Microsoft on this front.
Microsoft will be in a stronger position if users don't have the opportunity to adopt FLOSS products because they don't interoperate with existing documents (including those of their friends and work colleagues). OpenOffice.org has been a success not just because it's "good enough" and "cheap", but because users don't have to drop everything to use it. If OpenOffice.org didn't support the binary Microsoft document formats, the barrier to entry would be way too high, and no one would bother.
The GNOME Foundation is not contributing to, endorsing, improving or developing OOXML independently or towards ISO standardisation. We are involved in ECMA TC45-M to get as much documentation out of Microsoft as possible. If OOXML is crappy, particularly on the terms of ISO voting bodies, having good documentation only helps to illustrate that crappiness. We're not making it less crap. :-)
No disagreements there! :-)
I don't see how supporting an obfuscated, potentially patent-infested format designed not to be interoperable with anything, will do anything other than strengthen the position of the monopolist who is one of the main obstacles for more widespread adoption of Free Software in the first place.
Everything in the software world is patent infested, but in this case the Microsoft Open Specification Promise covers OOXML 1.0. It may not cover future versions, you may not trust them, but there it is. I am less concerned about Microsoft-owned patents than those owned by patent trolls. We're actually in a similar position to Microsoft on this front.
Microsoft will be in a stronger position if users don't have the opportunity to adopt FLOSS products because they don't interoperate with existing documents (including those of their friends and work colleagues). OpenOffice.org has been a success not just because it's "good enough" and "cheap", but because users don't have to drop everything to use it. If OpenOffice.org didn't support the binary Microsoft document formats, the barrier to entry would be way too high, and no one would bother.
I say support here because the OOXML format will be far more powerful if it is certified as an open standard, and I understand that the GNOME Foundation is a part of this process. [...] So what we may end up with is a somewhat less obfuscated format which is still too complex for anyone to implement to perfection, which is considered open because even the GNOME Foundation worked on its development/refinement.
The GNOME Foundation is not contributing to, endorsing, improving or developing OOXML independently or towards ISO standardisation. We are involved in ECMA TC45-M to get as much documentation out of Microsoft as possible. If OOXML is crappy, particularly on the terms of ISO voting bodies, having good documentation only helps to illustrate that crappiness. We're not making it less crap.
At the moment where governments and companies are increasingly standardising on ODF because they want truly open formats, the last thing we want is to have a Microsoft-created format with 6000 pages of documentation to be adopted instead, creating another lockin.
No disagreements there!
GNOME Foundation Helping OOXML? 471
christian.einfeldt writes "According to long-time OpenDocument Fellowship member Russell Ossendryver, it appears that GNOME founder Miguel de Icaza's widely-publicized praise for OOXML as a 'superb standard' is being followed up with on-going support by the GNOME Foundation in 'resolving' the thousands of criticisms leveled against Microsoft's proposed standard. In an open letter in his blog, Ossendryver urges the GNOME Foundation to halt its apparent support for OOXML as a standard and to put its efforts behind enhancing adoption of the genuinely open standard, ODF, which was approved by the world standards bodies as ISO/IEC standard 26300 on 2 May 2006."
Comment Re:FCheck or anti-keylogger may help? (Score 1) 204
Anti-Key logger:
http://www.anti-keylogger.net/
LOL check the links at the bottom of that page... they also sell Key logging and Spy software.
http://www.anti-keylogger.net/
LOL check the links at the bottom of that page... they also sell Key logging and Spy software.
Comment We will not miss much ;) (Score 2, Informative) 79
I guess we will not miss much, atleast if you have a broadband lying around. http://www.dnalounge.com/cam/ and watch the live webcast.
I better grab my beer from the fridge.
Ram.
I better grab my beer from the fridge.
Ram.
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