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Comment When I was a kid. (Score 1) 437

by chiko87 (#20524329) Attached to: Making War On Light Pollution
Just a quick comment. When I was in high school I would go to my grandmother's house on Flathead Lake, Montana,in the summer. I was always amazed at all the stars. Especially coming from Seattle, where just seeing any stars was a bonus.
Politics

Take Two Shelves Manhunt 2 350

Posted by Zonk from the not-surprising dept.
If you've been following this story so far, it shouldn't come as a shock that Take-Two has shelved Manhunt 2 for the moment, while they decide what to do next. The company is considering its options, and still fully supports the game as a 'work of art'. "Take-Two Interactive Software has temporarily suspended plans to distribute Manhunt 2 for the Wii or PlayStation platforms while it reviews its options with regard to the recent decisions made by the British Board of Film Classification and Entertainment Software Rating Board ... We continue to stand behind this extraordinary game. We believe in freedom of creative expression, as well as responsible marketing, both of which are essential to our business of making great entertainment." Analysts have already started weighing in, with some seeing this as unfairly targeting the GTA-maker for previous 'sins'.
Google

eBay and Google Make Amends, Kinda 44

Posted by Zonk from the best-of-cuthroat-enemies dept.
It's been tit for tat for some time; eBay bans Google payments, Google tries to throw a party mocking eBay, in response to which the service pulls all of its ads, fun corporate shenanigans. It seems as though, for the moment, the two companies have made up. News.com is reporting that eBay ads will once again be serviced via Google's adwords service, but that they will also be using alternative methods to a greater extent in the future. "Hani Durzy, a spokesman for San Jose, California-based eBay, said his company later on Friday would begin advertising on Google, but at reduced levels than previously. eBay had been buying tens of millions of keyword ads on Google each year. 'I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before,' Durzy told Reuters. 'What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought.'"
The Internet

Internet Radio Will Go Silent on June 26th 250

Posted by Zonk from the up-against-the-wall dept.
Spamicles writes "Thousands of U.S. webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry. In March, the Copyright Royalty Board announced that it would raise royalties for Internet broadcasters, moving them from a per-song rate to a per-listener rate. The increase would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2006 and would double over the next five years. Internet radio sites would be charged per performance of a song. A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays."
Portables (Games)

Bioware Making a Sonic RPG on the DS 49

Posted by Zonk from the oddest-title-i've-ever-written-out dept.
1up has the news that Bioware (makers of classic RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights) is collaborating with Sega to make a Sonic the Hedgehog roleplaying game for the Nintendo DS. "Sega's latest effort clearly illustrates the company's increasing interest in (and reliance on) Western content developers and Western audiences ... Now all we need to do is sit back and wait for the patented Bioware mid-game reveal which unmasks Tails once and for all as the evil Dr. Robotnik. Who needs Mass Effect? When the angst-ridden backstory of Knuckles the Echidna is your muse, the world is your spiky-headed oyster." For the record? I need Mass Effect. Now.

Feed Engadget: New details about the iPhone (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones, Features


Remember the winning Engadget commercial, "The Long Arm of Steve Jobs"? We posted it after the break, but finding someone who's spent some serious time with a pre-launch iPhone and getting them to talk is basically a lot like that. Still, we managed to smuggle out some freshly leaked details from a very trusted inside source who's been fooling around with a unit. Here's what they had to say:
  • The keyboard was simply described as "disappointing". Keyboarding with two thumbs often registers multiple key presses (two or three at a time) resulting in a lot of mistakes. The best way to type is with a single finger (as shown in most of Apple's demos), but two thumbs is supposedly very difficult. After trying it for a number of days our source gave up using their thumbs.
  • The text auto-correction only works well for simple words, but doesn't work for proper names. We can only assume this bit will get better with time as Apple fills out its predictive text dictionary.
  • "It won't replace a BlackBerry. It's not good for text input. It's just not a business product."
  • The touchscreen was said to, in general, require somewhat hard presses to register input, and needs some getting used to.
  • In addition to its dock, the iPhone comes packaged with a polishing cloth (the thing's supposedly a fingerprint magnet, no surprise) and the usual smallish power adapter.
  • The Bluetooth headset will debut in the $120 range, and will come with its own dock for charging both the phone and the headset. The headset will feature a miniature magnetic charging interface á la MagSafe.
Click on for more impressions on the headset, browser, YouTube, and more.

Continue reading New details about the iPhone

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
OS X

The Roadmap to Leopard? 152

Posted by Zonk from the includes-stops-for-dennys dept.
Alexandros Roussos writes with a link to the site MacScoop, which claims to have obtained a roadmap for the months leading up to Leopard's release. It's a straightforward article, stating how much access individuals outside the company will have access to the product prior to October. "Major build on early August - In a little more than a month, Apple's development team targets a feature-full build. The build that was provided to developers during the World Wide Developers Conference earlier this month is actually not totally feature frozen. Some minor features are currently being finished for the system. These features will arrive in the August build along with user-interface improvements, sources told MacScoop. If you expect major 'wow' features or interface changes, you will be disappointed. What we may expect is additional settings and [some] user interface polish[ing]. Among the most criticized parts of the new user interface [are] the new menu bar and Dock."

Feed Engadget: PSP clockspeed upped to 333MHz after 3.50 firmware update (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming

Sony has admitted that it sneakily upgraded the PSP's clockspeed to 333MHz (from 266MHz) in the version 3.50 firmware update that was released last month. This admission is confusing for a couple of reasons: for starters, Sony originally underclocked the PSP in order to increase the stated battery life of the console. Does that mean they'll be forced to decrease the stated battery life, so as to avoid false advertisement? It's also rather odd that developers are only now being granted access to the extra MHz oomph, prompting mutterings of a new PSP model which -- as one Joystiq commentator points out -- could take as long to appear as games that take full advantage of the 333MHz clockspeed. Or, maybe this upgrade simply enabled the PSP to cope with all that "remote play" malarkey that 3.50 enabled. That would be the logical assumption.

[Via Joystiq]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Technology (Apple)

Journal Journal: Should I let my infant stare at the iTunes visualizer?

Journal by backhand
Last night my eight-week-old daughter had us at our wit's end; she'd been fed, changed, had slept and my wife was out of breast milk. But still she screamed. And screamed. And screamed. I was in my office and in desperation, I put turned the iTunes visualizer on and turned her face to it. Magic happened; she immediately settled down and was entranced by the images on the screen.I know that infants should be stimulated by sounds and color, but I'm worried that letting her stare at the screen coul
Businesses

How-Not-to-Hire-U.S.-Workers Law Firm Fires Back 462

Posted by Zonk from the those-rascally-scamps dept.
theodp writes "Congress is now calling for a Dept. of Labor investigation into a Pittsburgh law firm after a video showing its attorneys advising employers how to game the immigration system was posted on YouTube. Cohen & Grigsby, the firm in question, issued a statement insisting their statements were commandeered and misused, but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety. Cohen & Grigsby has also been advising employers since 2002 that they have nothing to fear if they keep employees in the dark about the existence of DOL-required H-1B Public Access Files."
The Courts

Washington Woman Sues RIAA for Attorneys Fees 115

Posted by CowboyNeal from the time-and-recompense dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A Washington woman sued by the RIAA has asked the Court to award her attorneys fees, after the record company plaintiffs (Interscope Records, Capitol Records, SONY BMG, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, and Virgin Records) dropped their case against her after two years of litigation, in Interscope v. Leadbetter. The brief submitted by her attorneys (pdf) pointed out the similarity between Ms. Leadbetter's case and Capitol v. Foster. In the Leadbetter case, as well as Foster case, the RIAA sued the woman solely because she had paid for an internet access account, and then later in the case attempted to plead 'secondary liability' against her without any factual basis for doing so. This tactic had been repudiated by Judge Lee R. West in Capitol v. Foster as 'marginal' and 'untested' in his initial decision awarding attorneys fees, and in his later decision denying the RIAA's motion for reconsideration."
Television

Submission + - Score one for the legality of ripping DVDs

Submitted by
Jim Buzbee
Jim Buzbee writes: "Ever wanted to rip all your DVDs to a big network server so that you could select and play them back to your TV? Up until now, manufacturers have been wary of building a device to allow this type of usage because they've been afraid a lawsuit. The DVD Copy Control Association had claimed this was contractually forbidden, but now a judge says otherwise stating, "nothing in the agreement prevents you from making copies of DVDs. Nothing requires that a DVD be present during playback." Start ripping boys..."

Feed Reversing Cancer Cells To Normal Cells (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
A Northwestern University scientist describes new research that used an innovative experimental approach to provide unique insights into how scientists can change human metastatic melanoma cells back to normal-like skin cells -- by exposing the tumor cells to the embryonic microenvironment of human embryonic stem cells, the zebra fish and the chick embryo.

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