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Comment Re:I wish... (Score 1) 264

by jamboarder (#33715542) Attached to: Other Tech the Senate Would Have Banned
Hey! You, up there on that unusually high horse. You can yammer on all you want to about YOUR product. What matters here is whether or not I should be constrained from creating or using technology that COULD be used to make copies or YOUR product.

You have an issue with someone using YOUR product without permission, take it up with them WHEN they actually do it and be sure to afford them all the due process protections you would like if you were accused of doing something unlawful.
Image

Jordanian Mayor Angry Over "Alien Invasion" Prank 217

Posted by samzenpus from the war-of-the-worlds dept.
krou writes "Jordanian mayor Mohammed Mleihan has taken a dim view of local newspaper Al-Ghad's April Fools prank, which saw a front page story claiming that 'flying saucers flown by 3m (10ft) creatures had landed in the desert town of Jafr.' The paper claimed that communication networks had gone down, and people were fleeing the area. The mayor called the local security authorities, who combed the area, but they were unable to find any evidence of the aliens. Mr Mleihan is now considering suing because of the distress it caused to residents: 'Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.'" I guess they've never heard of Orson Welles in Jordan.

Comment Re:They missed the internet rush (Score 1) 133

by jamboarder (#31375428) Attached to: Microsoft Spends $9 Billion On Research, Focuses On Cloud

Not sure what you are talking about. Bill Gates was all about the power of the internet back in the day. Heck, IE DOMINATED the browser market, for what, like 10 years.

Ahh, younglings.... Before your time there was a creature called Netscape. It was in those days that Microsoft was nowhere to be found and apparently mocked this internet thing as a fad.

Ancient history, I know, but us geezers need something to go on about besides lawns and snow-covered hills...
Image

Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."
Businesses

Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies 397

Posted by Soulskill from the cause-or-symptom dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"
Games

Game Endings Going Out of Style? 190

Posted by Soulskill from the to-be-continued dept.
An article in the Guardian asks whether the focus of modern games has shifted away from having a clear-cut ending and toward indefinite entertainment instead. With the rise of achievements, frequent content updates and open-ended worlds, it seems like publishers and developers are doing everything they can to help this trend. Quoting: "Particularly before the advent of 'saving,' the completion of even a simple game could take huge amounts of patience, effort and time. The ending, like those last pages of a book, was a key reason why we started playing in the first place. Sure, multiplayer and arcade style games still had their place, but fond 8, 16 and 32-bit memories consist more of completion and satisfaction than particular levels or tricky moments. Over the past few years, however, the idea of a game as simply something to 'finish' has shifted somewhat. For starters, the availability of downloadable content means no story need ever end, as long as the makers think there's a paying audience. Also, the ubiquity of broadband means multiplayer gaming is now the standard, not the exception it once was. There is no real 'finish' to most MMORPGs."

Comment Re:No PVP? (Score 0, Troll) 235

by jamboarder (#30161810) Attached to: China Enforces Even Stricter Regulation On Games

And that's different with respect to other countries, how? Good thing businesses are so honest in the US or EU countries that they are never giving bribes nor are their people in power accepting them. If only China could learn to be as honest, upstanding and incorruptible as the people in the US Congress and people like Obama and Bush they'd just have such a wonderful utopia.

How is this flamebait?

Comment Re:I certainly don't anymore (Score 2, Insightful) 207

by jamboarder (#30078506) Attached to: openSUSE 11.2 Released
Oh please just shut up and go away.... Ok, OS X is nice. It's pretty. It does a lot of things well. It "just works". It "gets out of my way". blah, blah, blah. Great, good to hear it... for the bazzilionth time...

Look if there actually exist Linux folk who haven't heard how uber-awesome OS X is, they invariably live under a rock in some deep hole... deliberately. They don't want to come out. For the many of the rest of us who don't live in said hole, guess what? We choose to use (openSuse/Ubuntu/Arch/Mandriva) Linux despite OS X. Why? Cuz we are absolute nutcases who have nothing better to do than to use the piece(s) of software we like.
The Almighty Buck

Device Protects Day Traders From Emotional Trading 260

Posted by samzenpus from the never-again dept.
Philips Electronics, a Netherlands-based company, has come up with a device designed to protect day traders from emotionally based trading decisions. The Rationalizer measures your galvanic skin response and lets you know when you are under stress. An online trader can then take a "time-out, wind down and re-consider their actions," according to the company. This may have come too late for us, but at least future generations won't have to live through the horror of angry day trading.

Comment Re:Wow, shocking news (Score 1) 607

by jamboarder (#29138253) Attached to: Xbox 360 Failure Rate Is 54.2%
Nonsense. If the survey was restricted to just the people who report a problem, then the report would say that 360 (and PS3 and Wii) the failure rate 100%.

Let's even suppose then that the sample of people in the report was biased towards people inclined to report a problem. If the actual 360 failure rate was about the same as the PS3 or Wii, the percentage of people in the survey reporting a problem on all three systems would be about the same, even if the sample is biased towards people reporting a problem. The inclusion of the PS3 and Wii in the survey controls for this kind of sample bias.

It is perhaps more credible to argue that the percentages may be biased high for all three systems.

A more significant statistic that could perhaps be taken away from the report is that the 360 fails 5 times as often as the PS3 and 7 times as often as the Wii.

BTW, unit-hours should barely make any difference when your talking about consumer electronics, which in this day and have MTBFs on the order of decades. If the 360 is arguably as reliable as similar consumer electronics, the vast majority should be obsolete long before they fail. No anectodal or statistical evidence I've seen comes close to supporting this.

Comment Re:Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus: TAKE NOTE! (Score 1) 189

Last time I checked there were no laptops or desktops that were either manufactured or "Designed by Microsoft". So how exactly will Microsoft cut Dell, HP Lenovo, Asus, etc. out of the equation? How exactly will it piss them off if Microsoft sells their products in a Microsoft-branded store?

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