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Networking

Chinese Networking Vendor Huawei's Murky Ownership 170

Posted by kdawson from the worthy-of-neal-stephenson dept.
A month ago we mentioned India's suspicions that telecomm equipment from China might contain backdoors. There hasn't been any smoking gun on such speculation. Now reader littlekorea sends in some background on the ties one important Chinese telecomm vender might or might not have to the government there. "Conspiracy theories abound as to whether networking kit vendor Huawei is owned or controlled by the Chinese government and/or the military-industrial complex. But who really owns Huawei? Kiwi journalist Juha Saarinen headed to Shanghai to find out."
Medicine

Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss? 978

Posted by timothy from the that-would-be-too-easy dept.
antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"
PlayStation (Games)

Improving the PlayStation Store 107

Posted by Soulskill from the learn-from-competitors dept.
This opinion piece takes stock of Sony's PlayStation Store, examining its flaws and the areas Sony needs to improve as their gaming systems come to rely upon it more and more. The problems and suggested solutions involve everything from UI elements to demo availability to pricing inconsistencies. "Some people may say that the Microsoft Points scheme is a little confusing, but it is consistent. If a game is 800MSP in the US, it's 800MSP everywhere else. What a MSP is worth is up to the store, but for the most part they're close. The PlayStation Store on the other hand can be all over the place. While most games in North America keep to the same price point — such as $9.99 or $14.99, converting that over to Europe is another thing entirely. For example, Flower came out earlier this year for $9.99USD. In Australia a $10USD game gets converted to $12.95AUD. Or does it? Bomberman Ultra just came out, and it's $15.95AUD. Heavy Weapon gets released for $12.95AUD, while Capcom’s previous efforts, like Commando 3, convert to $15.95. The same thing also happens for more expensive titles. Both Battlefield 1943 and Fat Princess were released for $14.99 in the US, but in Australia they're priced at $19.95AUD and $23.95 respectively."

Comment Re:Linux support (Score 1) 520

by Sascha J. (#29149855) Attached to: Ask Blizzard About Starcraft2, Diablo III, WoW, or Battle.net
It has been asked before. I'm not sure if Slashdot already had an interview with some of their staff where this question was asked already, but I think there was.

Also, a german Starcraft fansite I read asked this question.

In both cases, Blizzard denied plans to support Linux - for the current (upcoming) roster of games at least. That's also why I added a "Did you change your mind about [...]" in my original question in this thread ;)
Space

Panel Recommends Space Science, Not Stunts 304

Posted by Soulskill from the lunar-mission-accomplished-banner dept.
wisebabo writes "A panel reporting to President Obama is recommending that we skip landing on the Moon and Mars and instead consider progressively deeper space voyages (first to the L1 Earth-Moon point, then perhaps the L2 Earth-Sun point, then a Mars flyby/orbit or asteroid visits). While in Mars orbit, the astronauts could send robotic probes to land on the surface, which could be much more effective than current rovers without the 10-minute time lag to Earth. I, for one, whole-heartedly agree that this approach would lead to 'the most steady cadence of steady improvement,' and keep us from inconsistent achievements in space (like not leaving Earth orbit for 40 years). Some would say that this approach would be lacking in the photo-ops necessary to maintain interest in the space program (no footprints on Martian soil) but I think there would be plenty of cool vistas — perhaps a rendezvous with a comet, or even orbiting one of the moons of Jupiter, assuming they figure out radiation shielding — to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing. The science return would be much greater because it would hopefully utilize both man and machine at their best; robots on one-way trips down into a gravity well while the humans provide the intuition and flexibility from orbit."
Biotech

Scientists Image an HIV Particle Being Born 129

Posted by kdawson from the begotten-in-dire-woe dept.
FiReaNGeL alerts us to a huge development in virology and microscopy: by using a specialized microscope that only illuminates a cell's surface, scientists at Rockefeller University have watched, in real time, hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together in a living cell to form a single particle of HIV-1. A video is available on Rockefeller's front page. "By zeroing in at the cell's surface, the team became the first to document the time it takes for each HIV particle, or virion, to assemble: five to six minutes. 'At first, we had no idea whether it would take milliseconds or hours,' says Jouvenet. 'We just didn't know.' 'This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born,' says Bieniasz, who is an associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Retrovirology at Rockefeller and a scientist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. 'Not just HIV,' he clarifies, 'any virus.'"
Privacy

Submission + - Questionable Data Mining concerns IRC community (vorratsdatenspeicherung.de)

Submitted by
jessekeys
jessekeys writes: "Two days ago, through an article on TechCrunch, it came to the attention of the community that a service logs conversations of public IRC channels and put them into a database. I'm talking about IRSeeK.com, a Full-Text IRC Search Engine.

What is especially shocking for the community is that the logging bots are very hard to identify. They have human-like nicks, connect via anonymous Tor nodes and authenticate as mIRC clients. IRSeeK never asked for permission and violates the privacy terms of networks and users. A lot of chatters we're deeply disturbed finding themselves on the search engine in logs which could date back to 2005.

As a result, Freenode, the largest FOSS IRC network in existence, immediately banned all tor connections while the community gathered and set up a public wiki page to share knowledge and news about IRSeeK. The demands are clear: remove all existing logs and stop covert operations in our channels and networks.

Right now, the IRSeeK search is unavaible as there are talks talking place with Freenode Staff."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - 802.11n Draft 2.0 Finaly Approved by Working Group

Submitted by
[Geeks Are Sexy]
[Geeks Are Sexy] writes: "Yes folks, the 802.11 Working Group has finally approved Draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec, brigning us a step closer to its final form. From the article: "With the positive vote from the 802.11n Working Group, the Wi-Fi Alliance will now begin officially certifying equipment as being compliant with Draft 2.0. That's an important step, as official Draft 2.0-compliant gear is guaranteed to be fully compatible with the final 802.11n standard.""

Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu 382

Posted by Zonk from the waiting-on-the-duck dept.
Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site.

Sandbox, an ACM Videogame Symposium 18

Posted by CowboyNeal from the scholars-like-fun-too dept.
drew writes "ACM is hosting a two-day videogame symposium on July 29-30 in 2006, co-located with SIGGRAPH 06 in Boston, MA, USA. The symposium will consist of keynotes, panels and papers. In addition, a 'Hot Games' session will preview unreleased titles from major game companies and indie developers."
User Journal

Journal Journal: blogging

Journal by Sascha J.
For quite a few months I am bloging already and I have to say... It rocks! :)
User Journal

Journal Journal: I am a /. member!

Journal by Sascha J.
Yeah, since today (August/09/2004) I am registered here, on /..org.(This looks funny^^)

Thanks to Jan S. to bring me here, finally. Hmmm, gotta ask him, if he got a /. account, too :)

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