Submission + - Slashdot Alum Samzenpus's Fractured Veil Hits Kickstarter

Submitted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @11:46AM

CmdrTaco writes: Long time Slashdot readers remember Samzenpus,who posted over 17,000 stories here, sadly crushing my record in the process! What you might NOT know is that he was frequently the Dungeon Master for D&D campaigns played by the original Slashdot crew, and for the last few years he has been applying these skills with fellow Slashdot editorial alum Chris DiBona to a Survival game called Fractured Veil. It's set in a post apocalyptic Hawaii with a huge world based on real map data to explore, as well as careful balance between PVP & PVE. I figured a lot of our old friends would love to help them meet their kickstarter goal and then help us build bases and murder monsters! The game is turning into something pretty great and I'm excited to see it in the wild!

Comment can't stop it (Score 1) 103

by jaroslav on Friday November 02, 2012 @11:21AM (#41853411) Attached to: Hurricane Sandy Fails To Stop Line For iPad Mini Launch

You can't stop progress?

Comment Carbon dating (Score 2) 155

by jaroslav on Thursday October 18, 2012 @12:43AM (#41689689) Attached to: New Evidence That the Moon Was Created In a Massive Collision

I feel obliged to point out that isotopic fractionation is not "central" to carbon dating. The key to carbon dating is that radioactive carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14 with a half life of roughly 5700 years, enabling biological material to be dated by its residual carbon-14 content. That is not isotopic fractionation, it's radioactive decay. Isotopic fractionation would be involved if you observed a difference in the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in plants versus that same ratio in the air.

Comment protecting pseudoscience (Score 0) 663

by jaroslav on Monday April 16, 2012 @06:44PM (#39705233) Attached to: Florida Thinks Their Students Are Too Stupid To Know the Right Answers

Honestly, I'd bet the reason the test designers are using these correct "incorrect" answers is because they know they can't include more appropriate examples of non-testable theories. Specifically: "God created the Earth in 7 days", "God created man in his own image", etc. etc.

Comment Re:Wasted effort? (Score 1) 298

by jaroslav on Saturday October 15, 2011 @06:38PM (#37726568) Attached to: Why Mars Is Not the Best Place To Look For Life

Also because what we know about thermodynamics tells us that analogous non-carbon (e.g. silicon) "organic"-molecules are less stable and thus less likely to be the basis for life.

Comment Re:Because Mars is the best chance for the price (Score 1) 298

by jaroslav on Saturday October 15, 2011 @06:35PM (#37726550) Attached to: Why Mars Is Not the Best Place To Look For Life

Dead on. It's not like you can just look at a pile of dirt (or ice) and tell whether there's something living in it. And you certainly can't do life detection from orbit unless you have a serious biosphere going, which obviously none of these outer solar system moons have. And the Europa drilling ideas that people like to throw around aren't going to be technically feasible in the time frame of the missions to Mars -- if ever.

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot 1521

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 25, 2011 @09:00AM from the steve-got-front-cutsies dept.

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.

NASA Discovers 7th Closest Star 137

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @12:48PM from the practically-in-my-back-yard dept.

Thorfinn.au says "Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. 'WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision,' said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground.'"

Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers 351

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @12:00PM from the we-watch-channel-zero dept.

dtmos wrote in to say that "This summer, StarCraft II has become the newest bar room spectator sport. Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches. As they root for their on-screen superstars, StarCraft enthusiasts can sow confusion among regular patrons... But for sports-bar owners, StarCraft viewers represent a key new source of revenue from a demographic—self-described geeks—they hadn't attracted before."

Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware 132

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @11:18AM from the can't-fight-the-fever dept.

wiredmikey writes "In their most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers pointed out a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years. Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threats to effectively dodge many security defenses."

MakerBot Gets $10 Million Investment 160

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @10:24AM from the thats-a-lotta-money dept.

First time accepted submitter chrisl456 writes "MakerBot Industries, makers (hah!) of 3D printers / personal fabrication devices, just got a big boost in the form of $10 million from an 'all-star lineup.' Replicators, here we come!"

Submission + - Facebook Data Collection Under Fire Again (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

JohnBert

on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @10:20AM

JohnBert writes: "A German privacy protection authority is calling on organizations there to close their Facebook fan pages and remove the social networking site's "Like" button from their websites, arguing that Facebook harvests data in violation of German and European Union law.

The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD), the privacy protection agency for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a news release on Friday saying Facebook builds a broad, individualized profile for people who view Facebook content on third-party websites.

Data is sent back to Facebook's servers in the U.S., which the agency alleges violates the German Telemedia Act, the German Federal Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Act of Schleswig-Holstein. The agency alleges the data is held by Facebook for two years, and wants website owners in the state to remove links to Facebook by the end of next month or possibly face a fine."

Humanoid Robot Wakes In Space, Tweets 91

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @09:45AM from the kill-all-humans dept.

DeviceGuru writes to note that "Robonaut 2 (aka R2), the first humanoid robot to become a permanent resident of the International Space Station (ISS), was awakened from stasis this week after six months in orbit. R2s first words? 'Those electrons feel GOOD!' The success of R2's activation on the ISS paves the way for putting R2 through its first movements in orbit on Sept. 1, when R2 will be sent commands for moving its arms and hands. Assuming these and other tests proceed without a hitch, R2 will start assisting the ISS crew with simple tasks in 2012. Coffee? Tea? Cigarettes?"

Interview With 'Idiot' Behind Key Software Patent 223

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:59AM from the hate-when-that-happens dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, an appeals court ruling opened the door to making it easier to kill software patents. It turns out that the guy whose name was on the actual patent didn't even realize it was at the center of the debate, and doesn't like software patents very much. 'So I was thinking — great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it — then I realized the idiot in question was me.'"

Submission + - Windows 8: estimated transfer time is no more (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:45AM

MrSeb writes: "Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist — five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That’s (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8. Copy, move, delete, rename, and conflict resolution are all being overhauled for Windows 8 — and it's about time!"

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