Submission + - Has Apple made programmers cool? (cnet.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @03:34PM

An anonymous reader writes: CNET suggests that Apple has totally changed the general public's perception of programmers: It's now suddenly cool to code. No matter what platform you're on. They argue that App Store millionaire success stories have "turned a whole generation of geek coders from social misfits into superheroes". Apparently, gone are the days when a programmer was the last person you wanted to talk to at a party: "Mention to someone that you make apps and their interest will pick up instantly. This is an astonishing change from what a programmer in the 80s could have expected in reaction to their job description". The App Store millionaires, or 'Appillionaires', may have done all of us programmers a huge favour. Programming is now socially acceptable: "Previous generations strapped on electric guitars and fought for superstardom in sweaty dive bars, but today's youth boot up Xcode on their MacBook Pros."

Submission + - Life-Bearing Lake Possible on Icy Jupiter Moon (discovery.com)

Submitted by

astroengine

on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @02:00PM

astroengine writes: "New research shows the jumbled ice blocks crowning the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa are signs of large liquid lakes below, a key finding in the search for places where life might exist beyond Earth. Drawing from studies of underground volcanoes in Iceland and Antarctica, scientists ran computer models to see if the chaotic formations on Europa's surface could be explained by the same geologic processes seen on Earth. It turns out that not only could this be further evidence for a sub-surface ocean, but also a mechanism that mixes ice and water, circulating nutrients and energy to get from the frozen surface to the ocean below."

Submission + - openSUSE 12.1 released (opensuse.org) 1

Submitted by MasterPatricko on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @01:41PM

MasterPatricko writes: The openSUSE project is proud to present the release of openSUSE 12.1! This release represents more than eight months of work by our international community and brings you the best Free Software has to offer. Improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, XFCE and LXDE; your ownCloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system on btrfs; and much, much more. Other notable changes include moving from sysvinit to systemd, improving the boot process, and being built on GCC 4.6.2 including link-time optimization. More packages than ever are available from the openSUSE instance of the Open Build Service, and soon you'll be able to create customised respins on SUSE Studio.

Submission + - Syrian Protesters Roll Out New iPhone and iPad App (thedailybeast.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @01:37PM

An anonymous reader writes: I thought you’d want to check out our cool article on how protesters in Syria, dealing with a strict media blackout, have rolled out new iPhone and iPad apps to share news, stories, and even jokes.

Amid a brutal crackdown, rebels are fighting back on their iPhones. Babak Dehghanpisheh on how the Arab Spring’s newest weapon keeps the opposition informed—and the regime in check.

Submission + - Obama Admin. helped coordinate Occupy X crackdowns (reason.com)

Submitted by Lawrence_Bird on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @12:35PM

Lawrence_Bird writes: Reason.com reports this morning on how the Obama administration helped break up the Occupy protests by providing advice and assistance from the FBI and DHS. Nixon must be smiling.

Submission + - Mongolia wants to use artificial glaciers to cool (wired.com)

Submitted by phaedrus5001 on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @12:17PM

phaedrus5001 writes: From the article: "The city of Ulan Bator will attempt to capture some of the cool winter temperatures in huge ice blocks that will slowly melt over the summer and cool down the city. The aim is to build artificial ice shields — or “naleds” — that occur naturally in far northern climates and can grow to be more than seven meters thick. They grow when river water pushes through cracks in the surface of the ice during the day and then freezes to add an extra layer of ice when night falls.

Engineering consortium EMI-ECOS will try to replicate this process by creating holes in the ice that is forming over the Tuul river. This will be repeated over and over again until the ice is much thicker than it would be if left alone."

Submission + - House Judiciary Committee SOPA Hearings Stacked 5 (techdirt.com)

Submitted by

Adrian Lopez

on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @02:17PM

Adrian Lopez writes: "Techdirt reports that 'apparently, the folks behind SOPA are really scared to hear from the opposition. We all expected that the Judiciary Committee hearings wouldn't be a fair fight. In Congress, they rarely are fair fights. But most people expected the typical "three in favor, one against" weighted hearings. That's already childish, but it seems that the Judiciary Committee has decided to take the ridiculousness to new heights. We'd already mentioned last week that the Committee had rejected the request of NetCoalition to take part in the hearings. At the time, we'd heard that the hearings were going to be stacked four-to-one in favor of SOPA. However, the latest report coming out of the Committee is that they're so afraid to actually hear about the real opposition that they've lined up five pro-SOPA speakers and only one "against."'

Demand Progress is running an online petition against such lopsided representation."

Comment Re:That's what happens... (Score 3, Informative) 247

by TMW2N on Saturday November 12, 2011 @08:45AM (#38034102) Attached to: Brits Rejecting Superfast Broadband

That's odd, since virgin don't limit download with the 50 meg service, and only throttle upload in areas with faster uploads

Comment Re:Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score 1) 165

by TMW2N on Thursday June 30, 2011 @05:35AM (#36620408) Attached to: Movie Industry Files Injunction Against UK ISP

to be fair Virgin's "limit" is at peak times, when you're probably going to find things are a bit slow anyway. I'm on Virgin, and downlod more than that most months, mostly overnight, and I've never had their warning letter.
Virgin are pretty up front about their peak time monitoring, and afaict have only recently come up with a figure for triggering their sending of a letter.
(for disclosure reasons i work for a company who work for virgin, but have no interest in promoting their services, i'm just giving my experiences)

Comment Re:MP3 players, too. (Score 1) 347

by TMW2N on Saturday April 09, 2011 @02:51AM (#35765834) Attached to: Magical Chinese Hard Drive

there's ebid. a friend is doing a lot of selling on there, and hasnt had any issues. or if she has, she hasn't whined at me about them the same way she did with ebay.

From Doom To Dunia — the History of 3D Engines 117

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @06:24AM from the looking-forward-to-tech-5 dept.

notthatwillsmith writes "It's difficult to think of a single category of application that's driven the pace of desktop hardware development further and faster than first-person shooters. Maximum PC examined the evolution of FPS engines, looking back at the key technologies that brought games from the early sprite-based days of Doom to the fully 3D-rendered African Savannah as rendered by Far Cry 2's Dunia engine. It's truly amazing how far the state of the art has moved in the last 16 years."