Comment 47% say Gov't? (Score 1) 550
Geez, the govt listens to your phone calls for a few years and everybody gets all paranoid.
It's not like they're reading your email or modi-
Comment Just have to know how to use them (Score 1) 584
We still have a couple pagers in service at my office. Occasionally, each of us have to carry it around all week in case it goes off because one of the servers failed and the primary support guy didn't respond (so almost never). Mostly we end up mistreating this thing and bemoaning the added pocket clutter. Handoff day is the best part about it.
Mostly it's a conversation piece out of the office. Waitresses at restaurants are either suprised or actually offended that we still use pagers. I told one that the pager was VERY important & that if it went off she should drop everything and leave the city right then. Get out as quickly as possible and don't tell anyone you were warned.
One phone call later: free meal.
Comment Re:No QAM support (Score 1) 156
And best of all you don't have to pay a monthly fee as you do with Tivo. (As of yet, it's probably only a matter of time before M$ starts charging!)
I sure hope they don't start charging, considering Media Center is why I bought Vista. The other boon there is that it seamlessly integrates with my Zune, automatically re-encoding and syncing anything recorded in the last week (which is, of course, more configurable). I don't have any HD, but I also don't have any DRM-crippled
The Best Gaming Laptop Money Can Buy 161
Parz writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their winners for the best gaming laptops money can buy as of Q3 2008. The analysis is broken into three sections to cater for three different budget requirements. There is a detailed explanation of why each laptop was selected, going into each hardware component individually. Regular Slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy. Prices may vary depending on where you live."
A Copyright Cop In Every Zune 454
Mike writes "As if the Zune wasn't already crippled and unpopular enough, now comes a story indicating that Microsoft may build a 'Copyright Cop' into every Zune. A future update of the software for Microsoft's portable media player will likely include a 'feature' that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. The president of digital distribution for NBC, J. B. Perrette, said the plan is to create 'filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.' Of course there's no way to tell legitimate content that you create from 'non-legitimate' content, so this looks like just another nail in the coffin of the Zune." Update: 05/08 20:50 GMT by T : From Microsoft employee Cesar Menendez comes this categorical denial of any such filtering mechanism.
Hacking Canon Point-and-Shoot Cameras 242
Pig Hogger writes "If you're stuck with a cheap Canon point-and-shoot camera and have feature envy over the neighbor's sophisticated latest model, fret not! According to this LifeHacker article, the CHDK project allows nearly complete programmatic control of cheap Canon point-and-shoot cameras, enabling users to add features, up to and including games and BASIC scripting."
Submission + - SPOT watches R.I.P.
Starturtle writes: "After a long, painful, nearly anonymous ride on the wrists of a select few uber-geeks, Microsoft's finally throwing in the towel on one of its longstanding pet projects: the SPOT watch. Those who've followed the technology recently (you know who you are) already know that the writing's been on the wall for some time; the applications and content available to the watches haven't been updated in ages, and indeed, the entire line of Abacus Smart Watch 2006 models — the only type being recently offered — has been discontinued and out of stock for a few months. For what it's worth, MSN Direct's program manager is quick to note that the underlying technology most certainly isn't going away."
Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files 626
mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."
MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams 243
Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."
Do Gamers Enjoy Dying in First-Person-Shooters? 309
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Brandon Erickson has an interesting post about an experiment on players' emotional reactions to killing and being killed in a first-person shooters (FPS) with a group of students who played James Bond 007: Nightfire while their facial expressions and physiological activity were tracked and recorded moment-to-moment via electrodes and various other monitoring equipment. The study found that "death of the player's own character...appear[s] to increase some aspects of positive emotion." The authors believe this may result from the temporary "relief from engagement" brought about by character death. "Part of this has to do with the intriguing aesthetic question of precisely how the first-person-shooter represents the player after the moment of death," says Clive Thompson. "This sudden switch in camera angle — from first person to third person — is, in essence, a classic out-of-body experience, of exactly the sort people describe in near-death experiences. And much like real-life near-death experiences, it tends to suffuse me with a curiously zen-like feeling." An abstract of the original article, "The psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic emotional responses to violent video game events" is available on the web." Obnoxiously this alleged scholarly research is not available for free, so we'll just have to speculate wildly what it says based on the abstract.
Inventor to Launch Pop Bottle Rocket into Space 285
DrButts writes "An inventor in British Columbia wants to be the first to launch a pop bottle rocket into space. 'This could be impossible, but the CEO of AntiGravity Research already holds the altitude record for boosting an elongated plastic pop bottle — propelled by a bicycle pump, water and a bit of soap — into the air. Firing the ubiquitous, two-litre plastic container usually consigned to the recycle bin into space might create a whole new definition for space junk, but the dream keeps Schellenberg going.'"
Feed The Register: Beer better than water: Official (theregister.com)
Hell no, H2O
Almost exactly a month after we learnt that drinking beer makes you clever, a Spanish boffin has proved that the golden grog is also better at rehydrating the human body after excercise.
Submission + - Super Smash Bros. Brawl Delayed
Dr. Eggman writes: As feared when it was announced that the Japanese launch was being pushed back to January 24, Nintendo has announced that Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been delayed in North America as well. 1up.com cites the new launch date as Feburary 10th. On the bright side, however, 16-bit era fan's prayers have been answered: Sonic the Hedgehog is officially in the game.
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