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Japan

Real-Life Transformer Robot On Sale In Japan 54

Modellismo writes "Last May a Japanese hobbyist revealed a DIY, real-life Transformer Robot Car that received lots of feedback. Now Kenji Ishida is back with a new version that will be officially presented next weekend at the Maker Faire Tokyo 2012. This new 1/12 scale autobot is made using a custom 3D printer (build by Kenji himself), and finally Transformers fans around the world will be able to buy it. The official price has not been disclosed. For now the production is limited to 10 pieces. It's possible to choose the color of the robot that comes built and programmed, complete with a wireless controller in a numbered case."
Security

Gene Simmons Threatens Anonymous Again and Gets DDoS'd 403

BussyB writes "Rather than shutting him up, the 'Operation Payback' DDoS attack on his websites only made Simmons more angry and outspoken. None of those threats seemed to bother Anonymous, however, and the group promptly launched another DDoS attack on both of Simmons' websites and rendered them inaccessible once again."
Patents

Red Hat Settles Patent Case 76

darthcamaro writes "Red Hat has settled another patent case with patent holding firm Acacia. This time the patent is US Patent #6,163,776, 'System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and relational system.' While it's great that Red Hat has ended this particular patent threat, it's not yet clear how they've settled this case. The last time Red Hat tangled with Acacia they won in an Texas jury trial. 'Red Hat routinely addresses attempts to impede the innovative forces of open source via allegations of patent infringement,' Red Hat said in a statement. 'We can confirm that Red Hat, Inc and Software Tree LLC have settled patent litigation that was pending in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.'"
Image

White House Correspondent Tweets His Heart Attack 77

Tommy Christopher, who writes for mediate.com, has reporting in his blood, so much so that he livetweeted every part of his recent heart attack. "I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!" and "This is not like the movies. Most deadpan heart attack evar. Still hurts even after the morphine," were among his updates as he was rushed to the hospital. Christopher is now in stable condition after recovering from emergency surgery.
Space

Rumor of Betelgeuse's Death Greatly Exaggerated 356

The Bad Astronomer writes "A rumor is spreading on the Net like wildfire that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse is about to explode in a supernova. This rumor is almost certainly not true. First, it's posted on a doomsday forum. Second, it's three times removed from the source, and is anonymous at each step. Third, the evidence is shaky at best. Plus, even if true, the supernova is too far away to hurt us. But other than that ..."
Open Source

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.'"
Ubuntu

Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release 984

CyberDragon777 writes "Ubuntu's future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on."

Comment Re:Inflamatory headling superceeds mundane content (Score 5, Informative) 268

We have announced that our upcoming Mono release (2.8) will default to 4.0:

http://www.mono-project.com/Roadmap

For the first time in Mono's history our C# compiler and its supporting engine and core libraries were done before Microsoft released the product, we were usually one to two years behind. This time we are some five months ahead of time:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-09.html

There are still a handful of loose ends here and there, but luckily, nothing major.

Comment Re:O rly. (Score 3, Insightful) 425

.NET was released in July of 2000.

And Google uses a mix of languages and tools: different features require different tools and all that. Had there been no legal problems, it would have been a no-brainer to use .NET over other technologies.

It did not have to be Mono, it could have been a third party .NET implementaion.

Comment Re:Wah wah wah (Score 4, Interesting) 425

You are mixing two different things.

Microsoft claims that they have patents had a chilling effect on Mono adoption.

That does not mean that I do not stand 100% by our position in the Mono project regarding patents. To begin with, we think it is a bullshit argument, since everything you use is infringing on someone else's patents (Microsoft included).

Microsoft like any other corporation will do a cost/benefit analysis of suing someone over patents. So far the kernel has been a juicier target than Mono has.

PlayStation (Games)

BioShock 2's First DLC Already On Disc 466

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from 1Up: "Trouble is brewing in Rapture. The recently released Sinclair Solutions multiplayer pack for BioShock 2 is facing upset players over the revelation that the content is already on the disc, and the $5 premium is an unlock code. It started when users on the 2K Forums noticed that the content is incredibly small: 24KB on the PC, 103KB on the PlayStation 3, and 108KB on the Xbox 360. 2K Games responded with a post explaining that the decision was made in order to keep the player base intact, without splitting it between the haves and have-nots."

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IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes... -- with regrets to D. Adams

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