Comment All the best (Score 1) 1521
Good luck with your new endeavours. For whatever reason, I still find myself coming back to this site year after year
-flend
Games Workshop Goes After Fan Site 174
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?"
Haskell 2010 Announced 173
paltemalte writes "Simon Marlow has posted an announcement of Haskell 2010, a new revision of the Haskell purely functional programming language. Good news for everyone interested in SMP and concurrency programming."
Modern Warfare 2 Not Recalled In Russia After All 94
thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia."
Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.
EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs 161
lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."
Keeping in Contact With Family, From Afghanistan? 176
LiNKz writes "Within a short while I will be heading to Afghanistan and in the interest of keeping in communication with my wife and family I've been looking at different means of it, from VoIP to cellular services. I'm not sure how well connected or how stable of a connection the base I'm deploying to has, which means VoIP might simply not be an option. I have, however, noticed in my searches that Afghanistan has recently boomed with cellular coverage though that too seems to be difficult to ascertain. I'm curious if the Slashdot community has any information or experience regarding international cellular services offered in this country and the means of obtaining it."
Charity Refuses Donation Because of D&D Connection 216
An anonymous reader writes "This year's GenCon Charity Auction
raised over $17,000 which they intended to donate to Gary Gygax's favorite charity,
Christian Children's Fund.
However, the charity refused the donation when they learned of its connection to Dungeons & Dragons." It seems to me all they would need to do is cast remove curse or dispel evil and the money would be fine to use.
Comment A long way to go yet (Score 4, Interesting) 205
As the summary points out, this is just a new recipe for making quantum dot tetrapods, for use in, for example, thin film solar cells where the cadmium selenide dots are encased in a polymer layer.
As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:
Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.
Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.
Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.
However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.
As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:
Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.
Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.
Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.
However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.
Comment Obligatory (Score 4, Funny) 335
"I'm a recall coordinator. My job was to apply the formula. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story problem. A new car built by my company leaves Boston traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: Do we initiate a recall? You take the number of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
