Trunks writes "No doubt trying to ride the hype train that's currently going for the new Star Trek film, Space.com has a new article detailing how warp drive may not be impossible to acheive. From the article: '"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving." One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang. "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.' Simple, right?"

Iddo Genuth writes "An experiment performed at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany has uncovered that a spin-torque switching of a nanomagnet is as fast as what is permitted according to the fundamental laws of physics' limit. This method of switching, also named ballistic switching, could allow for increased speeds in future non-volatile magnetic memories."

Today Capcom released Mega Man 9, the franchise's return to the 8-bit styles of the '90s. It's currently available for the Wii, and will be coming to the Playstation Network and Xbox Live soon. Capcom also announced some upcoming downloadable content, which will include extra difficulty modes and a stage that never ends, in which you are endlessly attacked. It will also give you the option of playing as Proto Man. Unfortunately, since the game is available through downloads only, the awesome box art will not be available to the public. Gamesradar has some screenshots and boss pictures.

Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A federal judge has ruled that a school district didn't violate a student's free speech rights when it suspended her for a parody MySpace page she created calling her principal a sex addict who "hits on students". In the ruling, Judge James M. Munley made the curious argument that if the case involves a student publishing lewd and offensive speech outside of school on their own time, then the proper precedent-setting cases to look to, are cases involving students making offensive statements in school during school hours, not cases involving students making less-offensive statements outside of school on their own time. In other words, if you can't find prior caselaw where all of the factors are the same, then the lewd-speech issue is more significant than the issue of whether the speech was made in or out of school." Hit that magical link below to read the rest of these words.

Michael J. Ross writes "Despite being perhaps the most popular Web language in use, PHP has for much of its history been criticized for not offering the full capabilities of object-oriented programming (OOP). But with the release of version 5, PHP introduced a robust object model, and made it easier for its proponents to create well-architected Web sites and applications. In turn, the new OOP capabilities have facilitated additional best practices, such as design patterns, test-driven development, continual refactoring, and HTML templates. These topics and more are explored in the book PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility."

a.d.venturer writes "Elite, the Metroid series, Dungeon Siege, God of War I and II, Half-Life (but not Half-Life 2), Shadow of the Colossus, the Grand Theft Auto series; some of the best games ever (and Dungeon Siege) have done away with the level mechanic and created uninterrupted game spaces devoid of loading screens and artificial breaks between periods of play. Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play, and a throwback to the era of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 - when games were stored on cassette tapes, and memory was measured in kilobytes. So in this era of multi-megabyte and gigabyte memory and fast access storage devices why do we continue to have games that are dominated by the level structure, be they commercial (Portal), independent (Darwinia) and amateur (Angband)? Why do games still have levels?"

destinyland writes "Comcast is the largest ISP in America. And they're requiring Internet Explorer for installations — even if you're using a Mac. The Comcast homepage even specifies that the page is optimized for IE 5.5 (which was released in 2000), and 'is not optimized for Firefox browsers and Macs.' With 13 million subscribers, you'd think they could spring for a web developer who could handle multiple browsers. (From the last line of the article: 'I'm afraid to ask how Comcast handles Linux...')"

Astat1ne writes in with a story in The Register about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing getting overseas-produced series and how this is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The problem is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website. Quoting: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series, Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first-run series first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months."