demigod186 - Slashdot User

'Daylight Savings Bugs' Loom 403

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 16, 2007 @01:07PM from the crush-those-critters dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has front page coverage of the looming daylight savings changeover, and the bugs that may crop up this year. With the extension of daylight savings time by four weeks, some engineers and programmers are warning that unprepared companies will experience serious problems in March. While companies like Microsoft have already patched their software, Gartner is warning that bugs in the travel and banking sectors could have unforeseen consequences in the coming months. ' In addition, trading applications might execute purchases and sales at the wrong time, and cell phone-billing software could charge peak rates at off-peak hours. On top of that, the effect is expected to be felt around the world: Canada and Bermuda are conforming to the U.S.-mandated change, and time zone shifts have happened in other locales as well.'" Is this just more Y2K doomsaying, or do you think there's a serious problem here?

Why Computer RPGs Waste Your Time 476

Posted by Zonk on Thursday February 15, 2007 @05:26PM from the argh-my-life-she-has-been-wasted dept.

spidweb writes "RPGVault has an editorial about two particularly noxious qualities of computer role-playing games. Spiderweb Software's Jeff Vogel goes off on a tear, discussing how you work forever to earn the right to do anything exciting, and must 'prove yourself' by expending tons of your time. From the article: 'So now, thinking about playing an RPG just makes me tired. I'm tired of starting a new game and being a loser. I'm tired of running the same errands to prove myself. The next time I enter my fantasy world, I want it to not assume that I'm a jackass.'" I think Oblivion handled this well, scaling the world as you went and giving you really interesting things to do from the get-go. What other games dodge this bullet? Do you see this timesink as an inevitable part of the RPG genre?

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

Submitted by dispatch on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:47PM

dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...

Comment Re:thoughts (Score 1) 206

by demigod186 on Sunday June 25, 2006 @12:57PM (#15600996) Attached to: Biometric Payment Arrives in a Store Near You

My company only uses the fingerprint scanners and SDKs for software we make, we don't make the biometrics equipment. Yes, they can match with the same software/hardware. I just meant that police departments can't use their standard fingerprint labs(having people look for minutiae points with magnifying glasses) to do matching. If the data is in NIST standard format(most scanners don't save to NIST by default), then any digital police lab(thinking FBI inter-state fingerprint database) can use it without conversion.

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