Comment Re:A better name (Score 0) 298
And if you do go south of Oregon, Americans sound strange to Americans.
Comment Re:Fantastic (Score 0) 169
Even though they cost more and cost more to scale. To scale the wiimote's multitouch, just pull the remote back a bit.
Submission + - Star Wars fan puts himself in Carbonite (thesneeze.com)
sneezesteve writes: How do you secure your nerd-cred for eternity? By acquiring a life-size replica of Han Solo in Carbonite, having Han's face removed, and replacing it with your own.
"It is made from fiberglass, and the short story is that a friend who is a special effects guy owned the piece, which was a direct casting off the original prop. He was moving, (aka getting married and yelled at) and asked me if I wanted it. I screamed a huge lispy "Yes!", and picked it up, but knew I wanted to do something cool with it. So I called my other nerdy special effects pals, and they offered to replace Harrison Ford's face with mine. I was so tired of hearing this offer in my daily life, but decided to finally consider it, so off it went.
KNB Effects in the valley took an algae mold of my entire head, then cut off Han Solo's, and replaced it with mine. They even added the frozen saliva that rushed out when Han got frozen."
"It is made from fiberglass, and the short story is that a friend who is a special effects guy owned the piece, which was a direct casting off the original prop. He was moving, (aka getting married and yelled at) and asked me if I wanted it. I screamed a huge lispy "Yes!", and picked it up, but knew I wanted to do something cool with it. So I called my other nerdy special effects pals, and they offered to replace Harrison Ford's face with mine. I was so tired of hearing this offer in my daily life, but decided to finally consider it, so off it went.
KNB Effects in the valley took an algae mold of my entire head, then cut off Han Solo's, and replaced it with mine. They even added the frozen saliva that rushed out when Han got frozen."
Submission + - AMD's Black Box Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Launched (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Rumors of a new high-end AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip circulated in July but
availability and specifics of the chip were unconfirmed at the time.
Today however, AMD has officially taken the wraps off their
new Athlon 64 X2 6400+, a 3.2GHz dual-core Athlon X2 set to compete with
Intel's Core 2 E6750 and E6850 series. HotHardware notes that
the new 6400+ is still built on AMD's 90nm fab process, has a single 2GHz
HyperTransport link and 2MB of on-chip L2 cache (1MB per core), just like its
predecessor the 6000+. The new processor is said to be a "channel only"
offering and will retail at $239 or so, in a black retail box without a heatsink."
Submission + - Windows XP: The OS that won't die? (pcworld.co.nz) 1
akkarin writes: PC World NZ has released an interesting article about Microsoft
releasing Windows XP Professional SP2c, due to the shrinking pool
of activation keys. From the article:
releasing Windows XP Professional SP2c, due to the shrinking pool
of activation keys. From the article:
Microsoft has had to create a new build of Windows XP Professional for computer makers because the six-year-old operating system's continued popularity has nearly exhausted the supply of product activation keys.
The new build, dubbed SP2c, includes no fixes or feature changes, but was created simply to address the shrinking pool of product keys. XP Pro SP2c, which has been released to manufacturing, will be made available to OEMs and system builders next month, said Microsoft.
Introducing the Slashdot Firehose 320
Logged in users have noticed for some time the request to drink from the Slashdot Firehose. Well now we're ready to start having everybody test it out. It's partially a collaborative news system, partially a redesigned & dynamic next-generation Slashdot index. It's got a lot of really cool features, and a lot of equally annoying new problems for us to find and fix for the next few weeks. I've attached a rough draft of the FAQ to the end of this article. A quick read of it will probably answer most questions from how it works, what all the color codes mean, to what we intend to do with it.
Submission + - Videogame Unites Republicans and Democrats (gamepolitics.com)
An anonymous reader writes: This is a cool game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet. The game is fun and well made.
Submission + - At W3C : Public barred from 'public' conference (com.com)
xk0der writes: "The author: Declan McCullagh writes..
The World Wide Web Consortium, which purports to be an "open forum" for standards discussion, doesn't exactly live up to its own claims.
...
Danny Weitzner, one of the W3C's policy directors and event co-chair, repeatedly claimed in a followup telephone conversation that, by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public." Weitzner was the person who personally barred my colleague from entering the conference.
...
Read the full story Here"
The World Wide Web Consortium, which purports to be an "open forum" for standards discussion, doesn't exactly live up to its own claims.
Danny Weitzner, one of the W3C's policy directors and event co-chair, repeatedly claimed in a followup telephone conversation that, by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public." Weitzner was the person who personally barred my colleague from entering the conference.
Read the full story Here"
White House E-mail Scandal Widens 839
Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies... Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
Marvel Studios to Produce Its Own Movies 151
Dekortage writes "According to the New York Times, Marvel Studios will be producing its own superhero movies instead of licensing the superheros to other Hollywood studios. It's all about the money: despite the enormous popularity of Sony Pictures' Spiderman 1 and 2, the licensing deal only netted Marvel $62 million. The article includes some tips about upcoming works: Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in a new Incredible Hulk, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man."
Ubuntu Linux Validates As Genuine Windows 401
bobbocanfly writes "Another crack in the Windows Genuine Advantage wall. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate an Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. (Here is an OGG video of the process.) Along with the advancement of LiveCD technology, this could spell the end of Microsoft's control over who gets their updates."
