Gooner_14 - Slashdot User

Shuttle Reentry Over the Continental US 139

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 18, 2010 @07:16PM from the boom-boom dept.

TheOtherChimeraTwin notes that the shuttle Discovery will land at Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning at 8:48 EDT. The craft will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental US en route to landing in Florida. Here are maps of the shuttle's path if is lands on orbit 222 as planned, or on the next orbit. Spaceweather.com says: "...it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown... Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoric fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead."

Microsoft Facing Class-Action Suit Over Xbox Live Points 107

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @04:45AM from the demo-suit-is-free dept.

An anonymous reader tips news that a lawyer in Pennsylvania has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that the company's handling of Xbox Live transactions is, in some cases, fraudulent. "Samuel Lassoff, of Horsham, PA, said an invoice he received earlier this month from Microsoft included charges for purchases he couldn't complete due to a balky download system — and he claimed it wasn't an accident. Microsoft 'engaged in a scheme to unjustly enrich itself through their fraudulent handling' of his account, Lassoff charged in papers filed earlier this week in US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania. ... 'Microsoft breached that contract by collecting revenues for digital goods and services which were not provided,' Lassoff said in his lawsuit."

New Super Mario Bros. Wii Tops 10 Million Sales 164

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @02:43AM from the it'sa-me-mario dept.

According to a report from Japanese publication Nikkei Net, Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii has now sold 10 million copies worldwide. The game needed only 45 days to pass the already impressive sales numbers of Super Mario Galaxy. Quoting Gamasutra: "NSMB Wii has sold 3 million units in Japan, where it launched on December 3; 3 million copies in Europe, where it launched November 20, and 4.5 million units in North America, where it launched November 15. Super Mario Galaxy has sold 4.1 million units in North America since 2007. The game's design hearkens back to the two-dimensional, side-scrolling style of earlier Mario titles ... The numbers would seem to suggest that these traits successfully generated more mass appeal for NSMB Wii than for the three-dimensional and far less familiar Super Mario Galaxy, which sent the plumber navigating more innovative spherical space environments."

PlayStation Network Expanding To Involve Other Devices 63

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday January 07, 2010 @03:44AM from the making-toasters-smarter dept.

At CES, Sony's Kaz Hirai confirmed that the company will build out its PlayStation Network for use with other devices, such as televisions, Blu-ray players, and PCs. Quoting: "... the expansion starts next month with the availability of the PSN video store on these other devices, and Hirai explained they are constructing a mechanism to create a single user ID across the entire network (if you have a PSN account, it's good to go on any other applicable Sony device, and if you create one on another device, it'll work on PSN). And finally, Hirai also announced the formation of a new Sony division — called Sony Network Entertainment, Inc. — to drive this expansion of the PSN service into a Sony-wide network."

Comment Make love, not warcraft (Score 1) 655

by Gooner_14 on Thursday December 03, 2009 @02:20PM (#30313658) Attached to: Man "Beats" <em>World of Warcraft</em>

I recommend a south park episode called: Make Love, Not Warcraft.

Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @02:12AM from the terrible-terrible-games dept.

drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students." While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?

Submission + - Fusion-io ioXtreme Consumer-Class PCIe SSD Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid on Monday November 16, 2009 @11:25AM

MojoKid writes: When Fusion-io's first ioDrive product hit the market, it was claimed to be a "disruptive technology" by some industry analysts, with the potential to set the storage industry on its ear. Of course the first version of the ioDrive was an enterprise-class product that showed the significant potential of PCI Express direct-attached SSD storage, but its cost was such that the mainstream market couldn't possibly justify it, no matter what the upside performance looked like. Then we heard of Fusion-io's more consumer-targeted play, the ioXtreme, that was announced this past summer. Fusion-io has only very recently released these new, lower cost cards to market. The first ever full performance review of the product over at HotHardware shows the half-height PCI Express X4 cards are capable of a robust 800MB/sec read bandwidth and about 300MB/sec of write bandwidth. The cards particularly excel versus a standard SSD at random read/write requests and even perform relatively well with small block transfers.

Submission + - SPAM: If the Comments Are Ugly, the Code Is Ugly

Submitted by itwbennett on Monday November 16, 2009 @10:47AM

itwbennett writes: What do your comments say about your code? Do grammatical errors in comments point to even bigger errors in code? That's what Esther Schindler contends in a recent blog post. 'Programming, whether you're doing it as an open source enthusiast or because you're workin' for The Man, is an exercise in attention to detail,' says Schindler. 'Someone who writes software must be a nit-picker, or the code won't work.... Long-winded 'explanations' of the code in the application's comments (that is, the ones that read like excuses), indicate that the developer probably didn't understand what he was doing.'
Link to Original Source

Scientists Get $2M To Predict Space Weather 40

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @11:46AM from the spock-with-a-goatee dept.

coondoggie writes "Looking to understand better how space weather affects a variety of everyday consumer technologies, including global positioning systems, satellites for television reception, and cellular phones, researchers at Virginia Tech's Space@VT research group got a $2 million grant to build a chain of space weather instrument stations in Antarctica. The National Science Foundation grant will help the group build new radar units that will work with the current Super Dual-Auroral Radar Network — an international collaboration with support provided by the funding agencies of more than a dozen countries. The radars combine to give extensive views of the upper atmosphere in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions."

Comment Firefox password save?? (Score 1) 849

by Gooner_14 on Thursday June 25, 2009 @05:58PM (#28473197) Attached to: Nielsen Recommends Not Masking Passwords

Firefox saves passwords!!!! - Now that is usability. Of course if you're on a public computer or work computer you will not save your password, and as many have stated you need to mask you password in a public environment. My personal computer, at home, only I use, so I get firefox to save my passwords so I only type it once per password, it's masked and most important I don't suffer from incorrect logins.

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