Dr. Faustroll - Slashdot User

King's Quest Fan Project The Silver Lining Is Back 61

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 28, 2010 @04:50PM from the every-cloud-has-something-something dept.

LoTonah writes "After eight years of development and a Cease & Desist from Vivendi, King's Quest fan project The Silver Lining is back in action. From the website: 'We are extremely happy to announce that our project, The Silver Lining, will definitely see the light of day! In a wonderful turn of events, Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining. After negotiations, the C&D has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining! Our team is ecstatic about this, and as hard as we've worked for eight years, it's the tireless belief and support of you, our fans, that has made this possible.' The first episode of the project is due to be released on July 10."

JPL Background Check Case Reaches Supreme Court 112

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 13, 2010 @12:43AM from the faster-boys-if-you-want-your-pay dept.

Dthief writes "A long-running legal battle between the United States government and a group of 29 scientists and engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has now reached the US Supreme Court." At issue: mandatory background checks for scientists and engineers working at JPL, which they allege includes snooping into their sexual orientation, as well as their mental and physical health.

IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? 193

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 30, 2009 @03:30PM from the one-keybinding-to-rule-them-all dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @03:10PM from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards 230

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @01:58AM from the more-or-less-finished dept.

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

Games Workshop Goes After Fan Site 174

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @05:03AM from the don't-anger-your-base dept.

mark.leaman writes "BoingBoing has a recent post regarding Games Workshop's aggressive posturing against fan sites featuring derivative work of their game products. 'Game publisher and miniature manufacturer Games Workshop just sent a cease and desist letter to boardgamegeek.com, telling them to remove all fan-made players' aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games...' As a lifelong hobby gamer of table, board, card and miniature games, I view this as pure heresy. It made me reject the idea of buying any Games Workshop (read Warhammer) products for my son this Christmas. Their fate was sealed, in terms of my wallet, after I Googled their shenanigans. In 2007 they forbid Warhammer fan films, this year they shut down Vassal Modules, and a while back they went after retailers as well. What ever happened to fair use?"

Comment A Somewhat Different Approach (Score 1) 1419

by Dr. Faustroll on Tuesday July 08, 2008 @10:53PM (#24110691) Attached to: Sci-Fi Books For Pre-Teens?

Like many of the other people who have already commented on your request, I would encourage you not to delete books from your list because they might be somewhat dark or complex. I remember reading Bradbury, Cordwainer Smith, Asimov, and Clarke when I was your sons' age, and appreciating the fact that the worlds and scenarios they created had ambiguities and shades of gray.

That said, I would recommend taking a look at a history of science fiction for suggestions. My own personal favorite is Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove's Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction - it does a great job of covering the classics of science fiction, while pointing out lesser-known authors. The book summaries and analyses should give you a good feel for whether a particular author would be of interest to your sons.

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