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Submission + - World of Starcraft Mod Gets C&D from Blizzard (pixelatedgeek.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: If you've been following the team who created World of Starcraft (an amazing mod of Starcraft to be more like World of Warcraft), their youtube video of what they've done so far has already resulted in a cease and desist from Activision/Blizzard. Evidently when you are given tools to make custom mods to games you should be careful about making something too good. The author of the mod is hopeful that it's just a trademark problem with the name of his mod but few details are out.

Comment Re:VM? (Score 1) 422

by buchner.johannes (#29741035) Attached to: Washington Post Says Use Linux To Avoid Bank Fraud

If the malware is in BIOS, it will probably not be network capable to send collected keystrokes. Drivers and networking is just too complex to do that. I'm also not sure where it would store them to survive a boot (on some hard disk sectors?).
AFAIK some antivirus programs do check the BIOS, but I guess smart malware may circumvent that.

Comment Re:terrible advice (Score 1) 422

by QuantumG (#29740775) Attached to: Washington Post Says Use Linux To Avoid Bank Fraud

If you regularly have to create a LiveCD, and you're the kind of person who is susceptible to malware attack, then:

  1) You're not going to do it, and
  2) You're likely going to get owned during the LiveCD creation chain..

It kinda seems like all the value of using a LiveCD disappears as soon as you start trying to update it.. which is why I was bothering to object to suggesting to people that they use a LiveCD, as they necessarily contain software that is not patched up-to-date.

None of this is new BTW, it's just that a pundit has stumbled into this old discussion.

Comment Re:Moon/asteroid mining opportunity :-) (Score 1) 456

by marcuz (#29375919) Attached to: China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports
I think that Man is not stuck on earth forever. There are still huge reserves of metals and other rare elements which we will need to have when moving to other planets but maybe its better to wait until technology gets better and more efficient. Next decades will be focused on resources more than ever. This will of course cause drop in standard of living as you have written. Stuff won't be as cheap. There won't be today's cheap (and abused) labour from china because china is done with focusing on exports and will start to develop itself with all the dollars it accumulated (and is now buying loads of commodities with them).

Comment You answered your own question... (Score 1) 313

by Joce640k (#29322079) Attached to: How 136 People Became 7 Million Illegal File-Sharers

"Why would the solution to something that is not easily enforceable be to make it legal? "

You answered it yourself - it's not easily enforceable.

What the RIAA/MPAA is trying to do is to get the governments and police forces of the world to enforce something which can't be enforced. The amount of money which could be sunk in this black hole if they achieve it is unthinkable.

The real problem is that the RIAA has spent the last ten years with their hands over their ears going "LALALALALALALA, we're not listening". Listening to customers is usually seen as good business practice, but they're not doing it.

The world has changed, people don't listen to CDs any more, they listen to mp3, and they want the singles, not a CD with one decent track and a load of filler.

Apple listened and their iTunes business is doing very well thank you very much.

The other elephant in the 'enforcement' room is that DVD sales are booming year on year almost in line with the drop in CD sales. Maybe the public is buying DVDs instead of CDs...? Nah, it couldn't possibly be market forces at work. We'd better spend billions of tax $$$ on law enforcement to protect the buggy-whip makers, just in case...

Comment Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score 1) 1345

by DrLang21 (#29316961) Attached to: Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling"
I remember very little of my multiplication tables and even less of my division tables. This is despite the fact that I work with numbers and statistics on a daily basis. Calculators are the standard in business and you are expected to understand what you are doing on them. Memorization of tables does nothing for your understanding. It's just a highly simple case of pattern memorization.
The Internet

Submission + - World's Oldest Blogger Dies at 97

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Guardian reports that a Spanish woman who is thought to be the world's oldest blogger has died in Muxia, the northern coastal town where she was born on December 23, 1911. María Amelia López's posts which chronicled her civil war memories, failing health, leftwing views, and cantankerous humor, attracted a global following and more than 500 readers have left tribute messages on her site after her family published a final post to announce her death. The blog began in 1995 as a gift from her grandson Daniel, with whom she lives, who had no idea what he was unleashing into cyberspace after he taught her to navigate the internet after she pestered him to download biographies of poets and politicians and later become her chief assistant typing in her words as she dictated. "Now so many people write to me that I can't hope to reply to them all, though I want to," she explained. "My grandson complains that he has to work as well, he can't spend all his time typing." López said in an interview that the internet had given her a new lease of life and in one of her last posts, published in February, she wrote; "When I'm on the internet, I forget about my illness. The distraction is good for you — being able to communicate with people. It wakes up the brain, and gives you great strength""
Earth

Ocean Circulation Doesn't Work As Expected 658

Posted by kdawson from the veins-and-arteries-of-the-oceans dept.
techno-vampire writes with word that a long-accepted model of deep ocean currents is inaccurate. Deep Sea News has a summary of the research, to be published in Nature. The Woods Hole press release has more details. "A 50-year-old model of global thermohaline circulation that predicts a deep Atlantic counter current below the Gulf Stream is now formally called into question by an armada of subsurface RAFOS floats drifting 700 - 1500m deep. Nearly 80% of the RAFOS floats escaped the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), drifting into the open ocean. This confirms suspicions that have been around since the 1990s, and likely plays havoc with global models of climate change."
News

Obama Calls For Nuke-Free World 705

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-give-up-mine-if-you-give-up-yours dept.
jamie points out news that President Obama has put out a call for a world free of nuclear weapons at a speech in Prague today. He acknowledged that it was a long-term goal, perhaps not something that can be accomplished in his lifetime, but promised to encourage the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. According to the BBC, he also stated his desire to "negotiate a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons," and to hold a global summit within the next year to work out agreements for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Obama said, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it." His speech came less than a day after North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket.

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