Tremulous Switching To Xbox Live, Exclusively 43

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 01, 2010 @03:20PM from the console-yourself dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Darklegion Development and Microsoft have apparently been working on a new version of Tremulous for the Xbox 360. Timbor, project founder and a main developer of Tremulous, said this in a recent announcement: 'What does this mean for you? You will now be able to play Tremulous on Xbox Live with thousands of other gamers, earning achievements and showing off your gaming skill. In the best interest of maintaining a steady and secure Tremulous playerbase, Tremulous is going to be exclusively available for Xbox Live. Existing infrastructure will no longer receive official support. Players who have already been playing for at least three months can apply for a €5/$7 coupon as a show of our appreciation of your enthusiasm so far! What does this mean for the community? Hopefully nothing! While the production of Tremulous switches from its current open source development to a closed source environment handled by the very capable and experienced Microsoft engineers, the efforts of the community will still be valued. In this collaboration we have made it very clear that the Tremulous community is very important to the game, and Microsoft agrees with us on this point. We are confident that this move will not stifle the creative output of the community.'"

Want a Body Piercing With That Server? 19

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 01, 2010 @11:35AM from the this-will-only-hurt-for-a-little-while dept.

1sockchuck writes "The web hosting business is known for promotional gimmicks. But here's an unusual one: ServerBeach UK is offering a free body piercing with every new server ordered on April 1st. 'We were tired of the typical boring giveaways that have been done to death' said ServerBeach's Dominic Monkhouse. The stunt revives memories of earlier guerrilla marketing efforts by web hosts, like the 'human billboard' who was paid $7,000 to tattoo a hosting company's logo on the back of his head."

Scientists Say Toads Can Predict Earthquakes 66

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 01, 2010 @04:38AM from the does-the-toad-think-it's-safe? dept.

reillymj writes "Researchers claim toads sensed a severe earthquake last year five days before it hit. Last spring's L'Aquila earthquake devastated the medieval city of the same name in Italy. Five days earlier, a group of biologists noticed some toads behaving strangely in a pond nearby that would later be the quake's epicenter."

Fossil of Ant-Eating Dinosaur Discovered In China 64

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @11:29PM from the ancient-picnic-defender dept.

thomst writes "Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience reports that a farmer in southern Henan Province in China has dug up the first known ant-eating dinosaur, a half-meter-long theropod (the dinosaur family to which T. Rex belongs), whose fossilized remains were described as 'fairly intact'. The 83- to 89-million-year-old pygmy dinosaur has been named named Xixianykus zhangi by Xig Xu, De-you Wang, Corwin Sullivan, David Hone, Feng-lu Han, Rong-hao Yan, and Fu-ming Du, whose paper on the critter, A basal parvicursorine (Theropoda: Alvarezsauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of China, was published in the March 29 issue of Zootaxa (the abstract is available in PDF format for free, the full article is paywall-protected.)"

Comment Another BS "formula" story (Score 1) 85

by Daniel Rutter on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:57AM (#25829489) Attached to: Researchers Discover How To Make the Perfect Phone Call

These "scientists have discovered the formula for" sorts of stories make (actual) scientists look like nutty boffins who make no real contribution to the world. (Actually, the word "boffin" is, in the Commonwealth, a pretty good marker for BS science stories.)

Newspaper science reporting is bad enough already. Do we really need this pure liquid crap flowing through Slashdot too?

(Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre has had rather a lot to say about these sorts of stories, and the whores who create them, over the years.)

Feed The Register: The romance and mystery of a good hack (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Monday August 06, 2007 @05:12AM

Plus an actual wedding

DefCon Blog: Final The 2007 Defcon badge (currently selling on eBay for $202.50) came with its own SDK, which explains why, by Sunday, a couple of attendees had hacked theirs to play music from their iPods.

Submission + - Gadets Taking Over Our Brains (reuters.com)

Submitted by

skotte

on Saturday July 14, 2007 @02:44AM

skotte writes: "According to a Trinity College survey released Friday, the boom in mobiles and portable devices that store reams of personal information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. While perhaps not news to slashdotters, the implication is a little unsettling."

Journal Journal: Man Travels 200 Miles at 13000 ft in His Lawn Chair

Journal by honorebel on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @11:56PM

BEND, Ore. - Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons. Destination: Idaho.
With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast -- he could turn a spigot, release water and rise -- Couch headed into the Oregon sky
Nearly nine hours later, the 47-yea

Submission + - John Knoll on CGI, Tron and 25 years of change

Submitted by StonyandCher on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @08:42PM

StonyandCher writes: Monday marked the 25th anniversary of of the relase of Tron, whose computer graphics were seen as revolutionary at the time. With that anniversary in mind, Computerworld spoke with John Knoll, a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Knoll, who served as visual effects supervisor for such films as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Pirates of the Caribbean; Star Trek: First Contact, and Mission: Impossible, weighed in on the limitations of CG back then and how far it's come in the last quarter century. (Knoll may also be known in the IT world for his role in the creation of Photoshop, which he developed with his brother Thomas.)

Submission + - Ancient robot (60AD) was programmed with rope

Submitted by Pingu93 on Saturday July 07, 2007 @10:14AM

Pingu93 writes: New Scientist has a feature about the 'worlds first' programmable robot, dating from 60AD. It was designed by a Greek inventor who was, appropriately enough, called Hero. He designed his rolling machine so that it could be programmed using rope and pegs in different configurations. Some of the writers at New Scientist went so far as to build there own version of the robot and the technology blog has some video of it in action.

Protected Memory Stick Easily Cracked 220

Posted by kdawson on Friday April 13, 2007 @08:55AM from the not-that-hard-a-hack dept.

Martin_Sturm writes "A $175 1GB USB stick designed to protect your data turns out to be a very insecure. According to the distributer of the Secustick, the safety of the data is ensured: 'Due to its unique technology it has the ability to destroy itself once an incorrect password is entered.' The Secustick is used by various European governments and organizations to secure data on USB sticks. Tweakers.net shows how easy it is to break the protection of the stick. Quoting: 'It should be clear that the stick's security is quite useless: a simple program can be used to fool the Secustick into sending its unlock command without knowing the password. Besides, the password.exe application can be adapted so that it accepts arbitrary passwords.' The manufacturer got the message and took the Secustick website offline. The site give a message (translated from Dutch): 'Dear visitor, this site is currently unavailable due to security issues of the Secustick. We are currently working on an improved version of the Secustick.'"

Anger Over EU Medical Data-Sharing 85

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 27, 2007 @03:42AM from the keep-it-secret-keep-it-safe dept.

ukhackster writes "A row is brewing in Europe over plans to make medical records available across the EU. The scheme calls for interoperability between health systems in 22 different countries. Experts are predicting that security problems could expose confidential patient records, with one calling the affair 'a colossal waste of money and energy.' This 'e-Health' initiative reflects similar projects in the United States, and raises many of the same issues discussed here. The article makes it clear that many important issues, such as security, privacy, and the rights of patients, are still up in the air as the project moves forward. Could this be another huge IT project disaster on the horizon?"

Comment Re:Uses? (Score 1) 190

by Mercaptan on Wednesday March 01, 2006 @01:38PM (#14828044) Attached to: Japan's New Supercomputing Toy

Biological simulations.

Protein folding, modeling cell machinery, and simulations of other biological systems at the molecular level. Think about the number of calculations involved in modeling the interactions between a few million atoms in something as simple as the ribosome. Now imagine adding the water and solute environment that surrounds these sorts of molecules. Oh, you could ignore the water and do the simulation in a vacuum, but let's remember that a driving force in protein conformation is hydrophobicity. And if you want to try this over time, say even a few nanoseconds, then start multiplying baby.

So yeah, there are some good uses.

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