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Games

Submission + - License an Abandonware Game? (slashdot.org) 3

Submitted by WolverineOfLove
WolverineOfLove writes: I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed in a Slashdot Journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away.
Open Source

Journal Journal: Should I license a copyright for a remake of an Abandonware title? 14

Journal by WolverineOfLove

I'm in the process remaking an abandonware game that I used to play when I was young on my family's DOS computer. It was published by a private company in the 1980s that folded a few years later amidst a legal battle. As a business in the United States, the company had registered materials for its products with copyrights. Today, the game's creator no longer has legal rights to the name, however, he continued to work on the franchise for a while, even hiring a programmer to create a GUI seque

Comment Re:Ride a bike. (Score 2, Informative) 255

by WolverineOfLove (#26007671) Attached to: Hawaii Planning State-Wide Electric Car Network
I hate feeding trolls, but you should be made aware that many Hawaii residents leave for West Coast (or beyond) schools. Many more than you may assume.

I went to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington and knew no less than four Hawaii residents who wound up in the middle of the Palouse studying Computer Science. The only other state that beat them out in people that I met (besides Washington, of course) was Alaska.

Just my experience, and real numbers may vary, but I didn't think I'd be meeting that many folks, I was expecting more from Idaho and Montana.

Comment Re:Hey! (Score 1) 357

by WolverineOfLove (#25991599) Attached to: Python 3.0 Released
I know this is an unpopular sentiment on /., but I agree with you 100% on the HTML/PHP thing.

PHP is well and good, and can be well done. But let's face it, when random IT guy with no computer science background wrote your timecard site in hacked-together PHP, it's NASTY to even look at.

Which... is why I like the ASP.net separation of markup and logic. I always have, it just made more sense than putting them both into a blender and hitting "Puree."
Biotech

Resurrecting the Mighty Mammoth, Cheaply 322

Posted by timothy from the when-faster-and-cheaper-are-synonymous dept.
somanyrobots writes with an interesting followup in the New York Times to the earlier-reported substantial reconstruction of the woolly mammoth genome: "Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA." (The Washington Post article linked from the earlier post was much more skeptical, calling such an attempt "still firmly the domain of science fiction." The New York Times article, while describing the process in similar terms, also calls attention to recent advances in sequencing DNA, as well as recoding DNA for cloning.)
Displays

"Minority Report"-Like Control For PC 138

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the baby-steps dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A startup named Mgestyk Technologies claims that they have an affordable solution for 'Minority Report'-like PC control. They have released a video in which they use hand gestures to play games like Halo and Guitar Hero, as well as perform 'multi-touch' interactions for applications like Google Earth. Engadget and Gizmodo discuss the potential of the technology but point out that the system has visible lag when used for gaming. Will camera-based interfaces ever meet the low-latency demands of gaming? For how much longer will we still be using keyboards, mice and joysticks?"
Science

Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds 249

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the still-working-on-a-use-for-the-worm dept.
MaxwellEdison writes "Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. '"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."'"
Portables

Toshiba Launches Laptop With Three GPUs 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the battery-killers dept.
arcticstoat writes to mention that Toshiba's latest line of high-powered laptops has three GPUs included. Both the Qosmio X305-Q706 and Q708 come with an integrated GeForce 9400M for day-to-day processing tasks but have a pair of GeForce 9800Ms in SLI that kick in when you need the extra horsepower. "The [Qosmio] X305-Q706 costs $1,999 US (£1,257) in the US, although we haven't seen any UK pricing on the laptops yet. The system comes with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 and 4GB of RAM, while the costlier X305-Q708 comes with a quad-core 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 CPU."
Microsoft

Microsoft Joins the OpenID Foundation 142

Posted by CmdrTaco from the embrace-and-extend dept.
wertigon writes "Windows Live ID just became yet another OpenID-provider. While the cynical me wonders how long it'll be before Microsoft transforms OpenID to something proprietary, they have undoubtedly put even more weight behind the OpenID initiative. So, how long before I can use my OpenID to post on Slashdot?" Patches are always welcome, wertigon ;)
United States

Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy 2369

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-that-matters dept.
A number of folks have been submitting topics that indicate that they want to have a serious discussion on the issues surrounding this election. Since we're under a week now, I've decided to run a series of discussion stories to give you guys a place to discuss the issue. So here's the first one: The Economy. It's the biggest topic these days, eclipsing even war as the most important issue to most Americans. But how will that affect your choice next week? And why?
The Internet

The Internet Is 'Built Wrong' 452

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-he-said-so dept.
An anonymous reader writes "API Lead at Twitter, Alex Payne, writes today that the Internet was 'built wrong,' and continues to be accepted as an inferior system, due to a software engineering philosophy called Worse Is Better. 'We now know, for example, that IPv4 won't scale to the projected size of the future Internet. We know too that near-universal deployment of technologies with inadequate security and trust models, like SMTP, can mean millions if not billions lost to electronic crime, defensive measures, and reduced productivity,' says Payne, who calls for a 'content-centric approach to networking.' Payne doesn't mention, however, that his own system, Twitter, was built wrong and is consistently down."

Researchers Decentralize BitTorrent 262

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
A Cow writes "The Tribler BitTorrent client, a project run by researchers from several European universities and Harvard, is the first to incorporate decentralized search capabilities. With Tribler, users can now find .torrent files that are hosted among other peers, instead of on a centralized site such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova. The Tribler developers have found a way to make their client work without having to rely on BitTorrent sites. Although others have tried to come up with similar solutions, such as the Cubit plugin for Vuze, Tribler is the first to understand that with decentralized BitTorrent search, there also has to be a way to moderate these decentralized torrents in order to avoid a flood of spam."

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