Comment Re:Could have been worst! (Score 1) 260
if the Wright brothers decided to file a patent for a device that produces lift as it moves forward (Aeroplane wings)
They did, that's a bad example. They were the patent trolls of the 1900s.
Comment Re:Or Ostrich (Score 1) 760
Ostrich meat is delicious and also healthier for you then cow. Unfortunately its hard to find here in America.
Razer Unveils Portable Gaming Device Concept 66
MerelyASetback writes "Razer has shown a new concept for a gaming device that uses a pair of 7-inch multitouch displays as well as a layer of tactile, dynamic keys on the lower screen. Much like the Optimus Maximus of yesteryear, this keyboard would enable gamers to place different screens underneath depending on the title, and even within a game — you could imagine the keys shifting to account for different POVs, levels, scenarios, etc. Internally, the concept is based around an Intel Atom processor, but there's no word on what kind of GPU would work alongside of it."
Preserving Great Tech For Posterity — the 6502 290
trebonian writes "For great old hardware products like the MOS 6502 (used in the Apple II, the C64, the Nintendo NES), the details of the designs have been lost or forgotten. While there have been great efforts to reverse engineer the 6502 from the outside, there has not been the hardware equivalent of the source code — until now. As Russell Cox states: 'A team of three people accumulated a bunch of 6502 chips, applied sulfuric acid to them to strip the casing and expose the actual chips, used a high-resolution photomicroscope to scan the chips, applied computer graphics techniques to build a vector representation of the chip, and finally derived from the vector form what amounts to the circuit diagram of the chip: a list of all 3,510 transistors with inputs, outputs, and what they're connected to. Combining that with a fairly generic (and, as these things go, trivial) "transistor circuit" simulator written in JavaScript and some HTML5 goodness, they created an animated 6502 web page that lets you watch the voltages race around the chip as it executes. For more, see their web site visual6502.org.'"
Comment Re:Use a real alarm clock (Score 2) 405
I hope we've all made time and date mistakes before, that I'm not the only one. I wrote some accounting software that ran a script every hour that calculated a set of numbers for billing information. Each hour the script would run, then at midnight another script would run to calculate the average hourly total for the day. To calculate the average, I merely added each hour's numbers together then divided by 24. My fatal mistake was assuming each day contained 24 hours, which would normally be true, except for one day. This specific day, the script ran only 23 times instead of 24 due to daylight savings time skipping an hour. The mistake lead to an artificially deflated average and quite the yelling from my boss. You would think we programmers could assume something simple like there being 24 hours in a day, but apparently our time and date system wasn't invented by a programmer.
A JavaScript Gameboy Emulator, Detailed In 8 Parts 62
Two9A writes "JavaScript has shed its image of being a limited language, tied to DOM manipulation in a browser; in recent years, new engines and frameworks have given JS a reputation as a language capable of bigger things. Mix this in with the new elements of HTML5, and you have the capacity to emulate a game console or other system, with full graphical output. This series of articles looks in detail at how an emulator is written in JavaScript, using the example of the Gameboy handheld: starting at the CPU, and (as of part 8) running a copy of Tetris."
Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft 407
An anonymous reader writes "Late last week, Google sued the US government for putting out a Request For Quotation for the messaging needs of the Department of the Interior that specified only Microsoft solutions would be considered. Google apparently had spent plenty of time talking to DOI officials to understand their needs and make sure they had a solution ready to go — and were promised that there wasn't a deal already in place with Microsoft. And then the RFQ came out. Google protested, but the protest was dismissed, with the claim that Google was 'not an interested party.'"
Comment Re:And it's great for sysadmins (Score 5, Funny) 104
You just dive in and swim to the server racks.
There's a new job opening in Altamonte, a sysadmin that is SCUBA certified.
Florida Town Builds Data Center In Water Tank 104
miller60 writes "The Florida town of Altamonte Springs has converted an old water storage tank into a new data center. The decommissioned tank previously held up to 770,000 gallons of water, but its 18-inch-thick walls provided a hurricane-proof home for the town's IT gear, which had to be relocated three times in 2004 to ride out major storms. The Altamonte Springs facility is the latest example of data centers in strange places, including chapels, shopping malls, cargo ships, old particle accelerators and caves."
Comment Re:Sony should have lost this already. (Score 1) 205
The primary purpose of the device (the PSJailbreak) that started this is piracy, and this is what the vast majority of people using the device and its clones are doing.
The act of jailbreaking your PS3 shouldn't be illegal, even if you do so with the intent on playing pirated games.
Instead, copying or playing pirated games would be illegal. It shouldn't be illegal until you cross that line.
Comment Faulty Software (Score 1) 470
The issue is the faulty time implementation in software, not time itself.
Comment Re:Not ready as a gaming platform (Score 1, Interesting) 520
There are several things wrong with what you just said.
I'll start by saying 'Wine Is Not an Emulator', it implements Windows calls in Linux.
Everything in Linux doesn't have to be free an open source, theres no requirement of it. It would be a welcoming site to see proprietary applications being ported to Linux, even if it wasn't open sourced.
Portal 2 Gets Release Date 110
AndrewGOO9 writes "After what has seemed like an eternity since Valve initially announced a sequel to their lauded puzzle title Portal, a release date has finally been attached to the game. Originally slated to be released before the end of the year in time for the holidays, Valve instead opted to delay the game, citing reasons such as, 'making games is hard' as well as continuing their tradition of releasing games when they're finished as opposed to rushing them out the door. Either way, mark your calendars for February 9th, 2011, and in the meantime, brush up on thinking with portals."
There's some new gameplay footage available, and Valve announced that Stephen Merchant will be lending his voice to the game.
Comment Amazon's 1-Click patent (Score 2, Interesting) 311
"There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system."
I believe this is how Amazon's 1-Click patent got started.
Why Software Patents Are a Joke — Literally 311
eburnette writes "A former Sun/Oracle employee explains how developers created patents in an unofficial contest to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. James Gosling said, '... we got sued, and lost. The penalty was huge. Nearly put us out of business. We survived, but to help protect us from future suits we went on a patenting binge. Even though we had a basic distaste for patents, the game is what it is, and patents are essential in modern corporations, if only as a defensive measure. There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn't nearly the goofiest.' Now Oracle is using patents from the same folks as the basis for its lawsuit against Google."
Slashdot Top Deals
I don't do it for the money. -- Donald Trump, Art of the Deal
