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Comment Re:What about the parents? (Score 1) 278

Wow judging by the amount of intolerance and pedantic annoyance in this and you previous replies I'm guessing you must be really smart and the fact that you must interact with us mere mortals must just eat you up.[/vent]

I for one thing would have liked to see whether the results observed in the group that received the games console were seen also in the control group after they received their consoles. That would certainly seem to have been completely feasible. Also it would be interesting to see if the test scores improved over time because as we all know when you have an awesome new toy you want to play with it all the time but interest wanes as time passes.

Something tells me that a few decades ago the introduction of a baseball kit or a new bicycle would have produced much the same effect.

ps: Mister Dvorkin, please don't eviscerate me again with your clever, clever wit.

Comment Re:DRM fights used game sales, not piracy. (Score 1) 631

Actually I'm thinking this might be part of a policy to make PC gaming in general a big enough pain in the neck to cause the majority of PC gamers to migrate to consoles which are far more robust when it comes to content control. The gradual shift towards "Games-on-Demand" for the consoles will then achieve the goal of killing second hand selling.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 5, Insightful) 294

People paying for content is not the issue here. Execs thinking that a for-pay service in a world of for-free services will be viable is. There will always be a free alternative and that is where people will go.
People like Mr. Diller believe that if everybody gets together and starts charging for content then consumers will have no choice but to pay up.
The fact is there will always be a free alternative. I'm not saying there isn't or won't be a market for premium content.
Just that there will always be free. Free-as-in-beer and hopefully free-as-in-speech.

Programming

Have Sockets Run Their Course? 230

ChelleChelle writes "This article examines the limitations of the sockets API. The Internet and the networking world in general have changed in very significant ways since the sockets API was first developed in 1982, but the API has had the effect of narrowing the ways in which developers think about and write networked applications. This article discusses the history as well as the future of the sockets API, focusing on how 'high bandwidth, low latency, and multihoming are driving the development of new alternatives.'"

Comment Re:It was nice while it lasted (Score 5, Insightful) 329

Shoutcast to the rescue, yes you have no control over the track selection but it's free, the actual streaming providers are completely decentralised and I've found that recently I'm not really using the next and ban features of Last.fm. Yes Last.fm will be missed but it was by no means indispensible.

Comment Re:Screw this (Score 1) 476

I just can't believe slashdot actually linked to some OSS zealot's (the kind of idiot who makes the rest of us look bad) blag and presented it as credible news.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud any opportunity to push OSS in favor of proprietary software but the kind of obscenity laden ranting this person was spouting gets dismissed as such and hurts our case for OSS.

Oh an Iceland's economy has not collapsed, it is seriously ailing, but not dead yet.

Comment Re:The opposite of what the EULA was invented for. (Score 2, Insightful) 116

I may be misunterstanding the tone of the quote but it seems to me that the 'consumer protection' being discussed here is the actual regulation of EULAs.
  To put it more clearly: It seems to me that the FTC would regulate EULAs to protect consumers from being screwed over by software makers' overly complicated EULAs

Earth

Black Holes From the LHC Could Last For Minutes 672

KentuckyFC writes "There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet (or this way either) when it eventually switches on some time later this year. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path, including the planet. Various scientists have said this will not happen because the black holes would decay before they could do any damage. But physicists who have re-run the calculations now say that the mini black holes produced by the LHC could last for seconds, possibly minutes. Of course, the real question is whether they decay faster than they can grow. The new calculations suggest that the decay mechanism should win over and that the catastrophic growth of a black hole from the LHC 'does not seem possible' (abstract). But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?"

Comment Hang on... (Score 4, Insightful) 171

So is it just me or does this bear a striking resemblance to Nvidia's recent demo of shutter glasses combined with a 120Hz HDTV. To me the black glasses are a dead giveaway.

As far as the "any source" part is concerned, let's not be silly here, you need concrete depth information. Sure our brains can infer this information but the sheer processing grunt required for a computer to do this means it will not be done any time soon at least not in realtime on full motion video.

I am embarrassed for Ars Technica and more than a little disappointed.

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