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Comment Re:Not Gonna Happen (Score 1) 222

by Phibrizo (#47103411) Attached to: China Looks To Linux As Windows Alternative

MS will not allow this. Look for them to give China whatever they have to, including a few billion in bribes to keep Linux from becoming the official OS.

"A few billion" of what ? Dollars ? China's exchange reserves are more than 3 trillion dollars. Yes, China will surely be hugely impressed by "a few billion" dollars. Why not some glass trinkets too ?
Bug

Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases 397

Posted by Soulskill from the and-don't-kill-off-patrick-stewart-at-the-beginning dept.
SSDNINJA writes "This editorial discusses the habit of Bethesda Softworks to release broken and buggy games with plans to just fix the problems later. Following a trend of similar issues coming up in their games, the author begs gamers to stop supporting buggy games and to spread the idea that games should be finished and quality controlled before release – not weeks after."
The Military

Russian Army Upgrades Its Inflatable Weapons 197

Posted by samzenpus from the blowing-up dept.
jamax writes "According to the BBC: 'The Russian military has come up with an inventive way to deceive the enemy and save money at the same time: inflatable weapons. They look just like real ones: they are easy to transport and quick to deploy. You name it, the Russian army is blowing it up: from pretend tanks to entire radar stations.' But the interesting thing is these decoys are not dumb - actually they appear to be highly advanced for what I thought was a WWII-grade aerial photography countermeasures. Apparently they have heat signatures comparable with the military tech they represent, as well as the same radar signature."

Comment Re:I never noticed until someone said something (Score 1) 420

by Phibrizo (#33282318) Attached to: Lucas Promises <em>Star Wars</em> on Blu-Ray in 2011
You said the scene *looks* horrible ? Well, i don't know about other versions, but the french one is awful. A real massacre. Each time Grandpa Lucas "improve" his movies, he must find new actors for the french voices, so there are now several different voice for each actor who has the misfortune to appear in different versions. The prize goes to the empire strikes back, with no less than 2 voices for Palpatine, and 3 or 4 vader! The episode IV is not far behind, with two different voices for Han, so that not only he does not shoot first, but he does it with another voice. In French, the scene doesn't only looks horrible, it sounds horrible too... If Lucas had a bit of pride he would re dubbing all his films. But no. I guess we, froggies, should consider ourselves lucky, and that it would probably be "too expensive". He also said that it is why he didn't remastered the original version. What a joke! That said, I guess I will buy probably the blu-ray versions, because the DVD are crappy on my HDTV. However, this is not what I am asking for. Rather than continually improve old movies, he should create new ones. I want movies on the old republic!
Nintendo

Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain 151

Posted by timothy from the maybe-it-just-takes-more-than-6-weeks dept.
Stoobalou writes with this excerpt from Thinq.co.uk: "A new study has shown that brain training games do little to exercise the grey matter. Millions of people who have been prodding away at their Nintendo DS portable consoles, smug in the knowledge that they are giving their brains a proper work-out, might have to rethink how they are going to stop the contents of their skulls turning into mush."
PC Games (Games)

EA Launches Ultima-Based Browser Game 106

Posted by Soulskill from the my-face-has-gone-numb dept.
On Monday Electronic Arts launched Lord of Ultima, a free-to-play, browser-based strategy game that's based on the Ultima universe. Quoting VG247: "Set in the new world of Caledonia, players start the game as conquerors raising an empire, and then move from developing a village to evolving it into a highly customized capital. Players can be peaceful merchants by trading resources over land or sea and using diplomacy, or become feared conquerors using armies of knights and mages to crush their enemies one by one in maniacal glee."
NASA

Shuttle Reentry Over the Continental US 139

Posted by kdawson from the boom-boom dept.
TheOtherChimeraTwin notes that the shuttle Discovery will land at Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning at 8:48 EDT. The craft will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental US en route to landing in Florida. Here are maps of the shuttle's path if is lands on orbit 222 as planned, or on the next orbit. Spaceweather.com says: "...it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown... Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoric fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead."
Space

Supermassive Black Holes Can Abort Star Formation 67

Posted by Soulskill from the glad-our-galaxy-is-pro-life dept.
cremeglace writes "Astrophysicists have found that when a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy. It's not clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment, but the research shows that the process might have determined the fates of many of the large galaxies in the universe."
The Media

Linux Action Show Returns 61

Posted by timothy from the for-your-time-on-the-elliptical-machine dept.
BJ writes "The Linux Action Show, the Linux-podcast to end all Linux-podcasts, is returning with their 11th season after over 7 months off the air. Kicking it all off with a live streaming event this Saturday at 5pm. Topics are set to include: Maemo/Moblin merging into Meego, Open Source Nividia drivers with 3D, KDE 4.4 and much, much more."
Encryption

How To Replace FileVault With EncFS 65

Posted by timothy from the for-secretive-tweakers dept.
agoston.horvath writes "I've written a HOWTO on replacing Mac OS X's built-in encryption (FileVault) with the well-known FUSE-based EncFS. It worked well for me, and most importantly: it is a lot handier than what Apple has put together. This is especially useful if you are using a backup solution like Time Machine. Includes Whys, Why Nots, and step-by-step instructions."
Image

Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319

Posted by samzenpus from the ad-nauseum-roundhouse dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Space

Spectrum of Light Captured From Distant World 32

Posted by Soulskill from the what-are-you-made-of dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos: "Astronomers have made the first direct capture of a spectrum of light from a planet outside the Solar System and are deciphering its composition. The light was snared from a giant planet that orbits a bright young star called HR 8799 about 130 light-years from Earth, said the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ... The find is important, because hidden within a light spectrum are clues about the relative amounts of different elements in the planet's atmosphere. 'The features observed in the spectrum are not compatible with current theoretical models,' said co-author Wolfgang Brandner. 'We need to take into account a more detailed description of the atmospheric dust clouds, or accept that the atmosphere has a different chemical composition from that previously assumed.' The result represents a milestone in the search for life elsewhere in the universe, said the ESO. Until now, astronomers have been able to get only an indirect light sample from an exoplanet, as worlds beyond our Solar System are called. They do this by measuring the spectrum of a star twice — while an orbiting exoplanet passes near to the front of it, and again while the planet is directly behind it. The planet's spectrum is thus calculated by subtracting one light sample from another."
Technology

Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165

Posted by timothy from the you'll-need-some-big-batteries dept.
angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
Image

Tower Switch-Off Embarrasses Electrosensitives 292

Posted by samzenpus from the radiation-placebo dept.
Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."
Games

The Murky Origins of Zork's Name 70

Posted by Soulskill from the murky-enough-for-a-grue dept.
mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."

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