Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re: My wife was out there the other night (Score 1) 64

by XenoBrain (#48249213) Attached to: Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions
Technically correct, it was identified as a sudden "strange" smell as there are other gasses in those pockets, thankfully it was enough of a tip off. She's asked permission (because it was taken in a restricted area) to let me post her videos to YouTube, we actually have some of this on (dark) cell phone video. Quite cool, and very dangerous!

Comment My wife was out there the other night (Score 2) 64

by XenoBrain (#48245663) Attached to: Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions
My wife was out there Saturday night as a county volunteer with a pass to go into the restricted area. Her group walked right up to the flow on Ala'lli next to the transfer station (she's got some amazing videos on her phone, I'll ask her to upload them to Youtube later).

She was the first to smell a sudden burst of methane, mentioning it the leader of the group, he shouted "we need to get out of here, now!" An explosion followed mere seconds after they has cleared.

I cannot tell you how shaken I was to hear that story when she got home.

Comment The Official RPG (Score 2, Informative) 183

No links to the offical RPG? Is this Slashdot or what?! http://greenronin.com/sifrp/ It's Good Stuff(tm). It's almost brand-new too. I wonder if Green Ronin knew that other license talks were underway, because once we get videogames and miniseries, the value of that license is going to shoot through the roof.

Comment Re:MP3 sounds bad to my ears (Score 1) 437

by XenoBrain (#20760407) Attached to: Review of Amazon's DRM-Less Music Download Store
Aside from a few "killer samples" that are specificly known to reveal weaknesses in the MP3 format, I agree you'd be very hard pressed to tell the difference between that and lossless.

But when I transcode to a 96k AAC for my portable (my desired format for bitrate/space) from that 256k MP3, it sounds worse than a file transcoded from a lossless source. No, I don't have ABX data to back this up, but it's a very reasonable assumption given previous test results.

A FLAC or other lossless file gives you the ability to transcode the music into YOUR format/bitrate of choice without additional artifacts being introduced, and this is a real plus to those of us with low capacity audio players.

AMD-ATI Merger on the Way? 215

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the by-your-powers-combined-i-am-cpt-hardware dept.
miketronics writes "Forbes.com is reporting the possibility of a merger between industry heavyweights AMD and ATI. This is largely based on a 'prediction on recent checks in the PC food chain' by industry analyst Apjit Walia. A move like this might give AMD some leverage over Intel, who has been slashing prices lately to compete with a major surge in AMD popularity in both the home and server markets. Despite AMD's recent gains Intel still has a dominant market share and consumers have high hopes for their upcoming Conroe processors."

Half-Life 2 - Episode One Interview 24

Posted by Zonk from the alyx-vance-on-line-one-for-you-sir dept.
John Callaham writes "On the eve of its release, Valve's Doug Lombardi tells FiringSquad why Half-Life 2 Episode One, their first chapter in their episodic first-person shooter, will be worth the $20." From the article: "From the creation standpoint, it's much easier to develop the story and plot via Episodic releases, as the focus is tighter by default. And since each of the HL2 Episodes are being created by a single development team, the story flow will be more cohesive as it's the work of a single body and not the collaboration of separate teams attempting to merge the different chapters after years of working separately. We are, however, keeping a very close eye on the overall story flow as we advance folks from City 17 to the adventures that lie outside the City in Episodes Two and Three."

Benchmarking 3 PHP Accelerators 81

Posted by timothy from the ack-phpttht dept.
jfbus writes "PHP, like all scripting languages, suffers from having to parse all script files each time a page is displayed. Accelerators (opcode caches) are necessary to speed PHP enough for large websites. Here is a benchmark of the major PHP accelerators (Zend platform, apc and eAccelerator)."

Nintendo Unveils Casual Gamer Brand 87

Posted by Zonk from the no-innuendo-here dept.
The Guardian Gamesblog discusses the newly announced Touch Generation of games for Nintendo's consoles. From the article: "This is, of course, a pointless piece of product re-positioning, symptomatic of modern business's obsession with branding above and beyond the call of sense. More importantly though, it's about Nintendo reveling in its E3 success. It is about a company that has effectively spent the last decade in its own self-made ghetto, turning to the industry and saying, 'I told you so' ... The wider world is coming back to videogames - and Nintendo is speaking its language. Anyway, the first three new releases in the Touch Generations line-up will be Big Brain Academy, the second title in the brain-training series, Magnetica, a marble-based puzzler, and Sudoku Gridmaster, a Sodoku game with over 400 puzzles. They're out this summer."

Microsoft Handheld Gaming in 2007? 48

Posted by Zonk from the x-parcel dept.
1up is reporting on speculation from analysts 'The Diffusion Group', who have forecast a handheld gaming device from Microsoft sometime in the next two years. From the article: "It's an analyst group's speculation and should be taken as such, but simultaneously one has to wonder what is the likelihood of Microsoft bringing a PGC to its platform library. A portable entry seemed like the next logical step for Microsoft before E3 -- and that logic was confirmed by the announcement of Live Anywhere at E3 -- a handheld platform would certainly make a solid launching pad for the mobile arm of Live Anywhere, wouldn't it?"

Blu-Ray Should Have Been Optional on PS3? 228

Posted by Zonk from the signs-point-to-yes dept.
Ars Technica has a piece looking at reasons why Sony may have wanted to make the Blu-Ray player optional in their next-gen console. From the article: "By tying what is essentially a gaming device to a new optical disc format, Sony is hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but they're expecting consumers to pay for the stone as if it were a diamond. That is, in hoping that consumers will see the Blu-ray player as a good investment in the future, they're risking the fallout that comes when consumers realize that diamonds aren't investments at all. They're for show. And the way the PS3 is priced right now, bling appears to be the operative word. But bling sells, and when manufacturing costs come down, we can all look forward to this edition of Sony Style... at least so long as we're not satiated by a competing product."

DS Lite Street Date Broken 31

Posted by Zonk from the mass-hysteria dept.
The_Toad08 writes "Apparently June 11th didn't mean a thing to the Big Box retailers, as the Nintendo DS Lite has been spotted for sale in several of these stores." From Ars Technica's coverage: "After some digging through all the blogs running the story, I discovered it originated from Cheap Ass Gamer, where one of their mods was able to grab a system from Target. There's even a picture of the system next to its US packaging, so this looks legit. Until finding them gets a little bit more widespread though, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Even though I'm lovingly cradling my Enamel Blue DS Liite that I imported, I'm going to hit the streets in a few hours to see if I can't track one down and confirm this, so look for an update to this story." Anybody lucky enough to pick one up yet?

Slashdot Top Deals

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

Close