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First Person Shooters (Games)

Duke Nukem For Never 565

Posted by samzenpus from the let-god-sort-'em-out dept.
PLSQL Guy writes "Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms is shutting down, according to Shacknews. They cite 'a reliable source close to the company,' who said the developer is finished and employees have already been let go. It looks like all of the Duke Nukem Forever jokes are turning into reality; DNF might turn out to be the ultimate vaporware after all." 3D Realms' webmaster, Joe Siegler, confirmed the closing, saying that he didn't know about it even a day beforehand. Apogee and Deep Silver, who are working on a different set of Duke Nukem games (referred to as the Duke Nukem Trilogy) say they are not affected by the problems at 3D Realms.
Social Networks

Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic 383

Posted by kdawson from the you-have-the-flu-swine dept.
judgecorp writes "Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it's argued that Twitter's structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google's Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map." On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.
Windows

Windows 7 To Include "Windows XP Mode" 364

Posted by Soulskill from the os-that-won't-die dept.
Z80xxc! writes "Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite reports that Windows 7 will include a built-in virtual machine with a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3. The VM runs in a modified version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself. While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers. Microsoft confirmed the feature last night."
Math

Physicists Propose New Kind of Quantum Tunneling 163

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the good-ideas-debunked-the-fastest dept.
KentuckyFC writes to tell us that scientists from the UK and Germany are proposing a third kind of quantum tunneling. They propose that a quantum particle is capable of changing into a pair of "virtual particles" capable of passing through a potential barrier before changing back. The supposition also provides some interesting methods of possibly testing string theory. So many interesting and useful possibilities, I guess that just means it will be debunked faster than other scientific theories.
Privacy

Submission + - Internet group declares war on Scientology (youtube.com)

Submitted by
Darkman, Walkin Dude
Darkman, Walkin Dude writes: "An internet group calling itself "Anonymous" has declared war on the Church of Scientology, which has made an appearance on Slashdot before. This group has gained notoriety in the past with stunts such as threatening to detonate "dirty bombs" in stadiums nationwide in the US, leading to one arrest. Stories are spreading throughout the web of this bold declaration, and the main Scientology website has been offline since the statement was released."
Graphics

Submission + - Drawing on Air

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "In a recent article, PhysOrg.com reports that a team of computer scientists at Brown University has developed Drawing on Air, a haptic-aided interface to help artists to create 3D illustrations while wearing a virtual reality mask. 'The technique introduces two new strategies, using one hand or two hands, to give artists the tools they need for drawing different types of curves, and for viewing and editing their work.' The researchers hope that these techniques will improve the precision with which scientists can interact with their 3D data using a computer. This also would help artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects. Read more for additional details and several pictures made with this system, a bat flight, a bearded man and a Swahili bride."
Education

Submission + - Wikipedia 2.0, with added trust (tmcnet.com)

Submitted by
USB EVDO
USB EVDO writes: "The online encyclopedia is set to trial two systems aimed at boosting readers' confidence in its accuracy. Over the past few years, a series of measures aimed at reducing the threat of vandalism and boosting public confidence in Wikipedia have been developed. Last month a project designed independently of Wikipedia, called WikiScanner, allowed people to work out what the motivations behind certain entries might be by revealing which people or organisations the contributions were made by . Meanwhile the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that oversees the online encyclopedia, now says it is poised to trial a host of new trust-based capabilities. Source: New Scientist."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Why can't we produce bug free software ?

Journal by emacsian
Software is made by humans. Though in the process of development we learn by mistakes and develop processes and tools to forecast mistakes that we might make, the point is that there are some factors such as environment, new hardware, new requirements. And all of these are engineered and developed by humans. Human minds and thoughts are not the same. It is driven by a lot of external factors. It is thus prone to mistakes. If it was possible to produce bug free software then either of them could
Communications

BBC Uses Skype Links In Murder Hunt 193

Posted by kdawson from the free-and-anonymous dept.
Nico M writes "The highly publicized UK murder hunt for the serial killer(s) of five young sex workers in Suffolk is using Skype to ask the public for information. BBC News is embedding freephone Skype links to both the police incident room and Crimestoppers UK. Is this the first time Skype has been used in this way?"

Microsoft One Step From World's Greenest Company 492

Posted by samzenpus from the environmental-update dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Microsoft is only a few lines of code away from becoming the greenest company on Earth." From the article: "Redmond should issue a software upgrade to every computer running Microsoft Windows worldwide to adjust each machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency." The author figures that the upgrade would affect 100 million computers and that the power cost savings could hit $7 billion per year. CO2 emissions would be cut by 45 million tons. But what about the impact on computing?

Thai IT Minister Slams Open Source 520

Posted by samzenpus from the not-good-enough dept.
patiwat writes "Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: 'With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source.' This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."

Monitor a Linux Box With Machine Generated Music 114

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-you-can-duh dept.
mcappel writes "Linux and Unix admins are familiar with vmstat and top, which are visual tools displaying the health of a computer. chordStats adds a new interface to a system monitoring setup — information passed through tone, timbre, and harmony. IBM's Nathan Harrington, who wrote Knock Some Commands Into Your Laptop, created a simple Perl script to send note events to FluidSynth that forces various system events to be interpreted as a part of a harmonious interval, and looks at options for enhancing a musical system monitor."

Charge in 5 minutes, Drive 500 miles? 319

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shocking-discoveries dept.
ctroutwi writes "In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on the horizon. Including Hybrids, Biofuels, fuel cells and battery powered all electric cars. CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering Ultra-Capacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultra-capacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately 9$ (~$.45 a gallon) of electricity and then drive 500 miles."

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