dassen - Slashdot User

Building the LEGO MMO 116

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 28, 2010 @03:28AM from the brick-by-brick dept.

Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with NetDevil's Ryan Seabury, creative director for LEGO Universe, which is due to launch next month. He talks about some of the difficulties in graphically optimizing a game with so many discrete, interactive objects, and mentions that they'll be keeping an eye out for inappropriate contructs to avoid problems similar to those that cropped up with Spore. "One thing we can say is when you build models you have your own property, and you can share that if you want to. If you share something publicly, it will be monitored by a human before it's seen by other people." Seabury also explains their desire to keep the game simple, using players' creativity as a driving force, as well as NetDevil's decision to stay away from a micro-transaction business model.

UK ISPs Profit From Coughing Up Customer Data 59

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 28, 2010 @01:22AM from the they-call-it-monetization-of-assets dept.

nk497 writes "ISPs in the UK are charging as much as £120 to hand customer data over to rightsholders looking for proof of piracy, according to the Federation Against Software Theft. While ISPs have to hand over log details for free in criminal cases, they are free to charge in civil cases — and can set the price. 'In 2006, we ran Operation Tracker in which we identified about 130 users who were sharing copies of a security program over the web,' said John Lovelock, chief executive of FAST. 'In the end we got about 100 names out of them, but that cost us £12,000, and that was on top of the investigative costs and the legal fees.'"

First 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito Created 261

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 15, 2010 @07:59PM from the what-about-a-really-good-egg-cream dept.

Gisg writes "The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically modified mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. Riehle and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not even one mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite."

Apple, RIM, Google All Bid On Palm 117

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 15, 2010 @07:00PM from the face-palm-apple dept.

imamac writes "It seems HP was only one of many bidders for the struggling Palm. The others included Apple, RIM and even Google. You may now commence speculation on why the various companies wanted Palm."

After 2 Years of Development, LTSP 5.2 Is Out 79

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 21, 2010 @06:22PM from the terminal-velocity dept.

The Linux Terminal Server Project has for years been simplifying the task of time-sharing a Linux system by means of X terminals (including repurposed low-end PCs). Now, stgraber writes "After almost two years or work and 994 commits later made by only 14 contributors, the LTSP team is proud to announce that the Linux Terminal Server Project released LTSP 5.2 on Wednesday the 17th of February. As the LTSP team wanted this release to be some kind of a reference point in LTSP's history, LDM (LTSP Display Manager) 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 were released on the same day. Packages for LTSP 5.2, LDM 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 are already in Ubuntu Lucid and a backport for Karmic is available. For other distributions, packages should be available very soon. And the upstream code is, as always, available on Launchpad."

Comment iRex Digital Reader 1000S (Score 1) 684

by dassen on Monday February 15, 2010 @07:33AM (#31142684) Attached to: It's 2010; What's the Best E-Reader?

For me the best e-book reader sofar is the iRex Digital Reader 1000S. It is not cheap, but it does A4 pdf and has no DRM issues. I need it mainly for technical papers in pdf format. But it also does e-books from Gutenberg or other source very well. Its main shortcoming is the very poor support of html.

Asus DR-570 E-Reader To Bring OLED Display 70

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @11:30AM from the oled-tech-is-trouble-for-my-bank-account dept.

MojoKid writes "Reportedly, Asus will be introducing the DR-570 color eReader by the end of 2010, but it won't be just another one in the crowd. In fact, it just might be a game-changer. The reader will supposedly have a 6" screen, but rather than using e-ink like every other reader out there, this one will utilize a color OLED screen. Word is the unit will last a whopping 122 hours on a full charge. It should also be able to run Flash applications, download books over 3G to Wi-Fi, and most likely surf the web, unlike any other reader out there." Asus will be rolling out two other ebook reader models this year as well.

Comment It matters a lot for Classical music (Score 1) 849

by dassen on Wednesday November 18, 2009 @08:04AM (#30141970) Attached to: Can We Really Tell Lossless From MP3?

It matters a lot for Classical music, less so for most types of pop music. Obviously it depends also on bitrate and recording quality. But I have never yet heard a compressed music file with classical music/ Opera which matches FLAC. In this day and age with the size and price of disk space there is absolutely no reason to use lossy compression.

Comment Mobile Phone Hardware Adoption (Score 1) 386

by dassen on Thursday September 25, 2008 @01:51AM (#25147691) Attached to: Mobile Phone Users Struggle With Hardware Adoption

I buy a mobile phone to make calls and send SMS.
If I want to take pictures I use a camera.
If I want to use a music player I will certainly not use an mp3 player but something with ogg or flac (Cowon is my favorite).
Cramming all functions into a mobile phone will just lead to poor quality cameras and poor quality music. And yes UI is also an issue.
To me it is just mobile phone companies trying to justify higher prices for their devices. It is almost impossible to buy a good mobile phone without all this extra overload that I will never use, even though I know perfectly well how to operate the thing.

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