Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
PC Games (Games)

PC Grand Theft Auto IV Features SecuROM DRM 531

Posted by Soulskill from the players-are-pirates-qed dept.
arcticstoat writes "Game developer Rockstar has revealed that the forthcoming PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will feature the controversial SecuROM 7 DRM system. Unlike some of EA's recent titles, such as Spore and Mass Effect, GTA IV won't limit the number of times that you can install the game, although SecuROM will be impossible to remove without leaving 'some traces' on your PC. Anyone hoping to avoid SecuROM by downloading the game form Steam will also be disappointed, as Rockstar says that all versions of the game will feature SecuROM, including digital versions online. On the plus side, Rockstar says that it's 'working with SecuROM to post information on our support pages regarding how to remove these inactive traces of the program for users who wish to do so.' Has Rockstar gotten a better balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here?"
Security

Submission + - Physicist calculates trajectory of tiger at SF zoo (arxivblog.com) 1

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Is it really possible for a 350 pound tiger to leap a 12.5 foot barrier from 33 feet away? A physicist at Northeastern University has done the math, a straightforward problem in ballistics, and the answer turns out to be yes (abstract on the physics arXiv). But I guess we already knew that following the death of Carlos Souza at the hands of Tatiana, a Siberian Tiger he had allegedly been taunting at San Francisco zoo at the end of last year."
The Courts

Submission + - Italian parliament to mistakenly legalize mp3 p2p

Submitted by plainwhitetoast
plainwhitetoast writes: As says an article on La Repubblica.it (in Italian), according to notorious Italian lawyer Andrea Monti (copyright and internet expert), the new Italian copyright law would authorize users to publish and freely share copyrighted music (p2p included). The new law, already approved by both chamber of deputies and senate, says indeed that is allowed the free publication through the Internet, free of charge, of images and music at low resolution or degraded for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for lucre. As Andrea Monti says in the interview, those who wrote it didn't realise that the word "degraded" is technical, with a very precise meaning, which includes mp3s: as you all surely already know, mp3s are compressed with an algorithm that implies quality loss. The law will be effective after the appropriate decree of the ministry, and will probably have a notable impact on pending p2p judicial cases. According to the article Enzo Mazza, president of the FIMI (Federation of the Italian music industry), stated that they're not worried about this new law because they already know how the ministry's decree will be (how strange that somebody has previews on government's decrees, but declarations like this are made daily in Italy, without care). He also added that in such decree, will be considered for educational use only those websites that deal officially with didactics like academic institutions, an that even professors' personal websites will be excluded. But Andrea Monti commented that would be impossible to set such limits, because the Italian Constitution authorizes every citizen to make didactic and scientifical divulgation. The only chance for politicians to avoid p2p legalization (and therefore the de-facto destruction music copyright) would be to slow down the process of the ministerial decree (so that the new law remains ineffective) and in the meantime hurry to amend the law. We'll see what's going to happen, but in the meantime, what a thrill for copyright holders...
Google

Google's Summer of Code Headed Down Under 41

Posted by Soulskill from the now-is-the-summer-of-your-foss-content dept.
Stony Stevenson alerts us to news that Google is hinting at the possibility of an Australian version of the Summer of Code program. We've discussed the results of the Summer of Code program in the past. Quoting iTnews: "The global program had attracted students from 90 countries around the world, including Australia, said Hawthorn. But as the timing clashed with winter term time in the southern hemisphere, it's been tough for local students to participate. Stopping short of confirming the program, Hawthorn said Google is looking into finding the human resources - as opposed to the financial resources - to make it happen."
Mozilla

Feedback Sought for Proposed Mobile Firefox UIs 28

Posted by Soulskill from the firefox-to-go dept.
jangel writes to give us a look at the prototype UIs for Mobile Firefox, which is currently under development. Mozilla project lead Doug Turner has asked for opinions on the design. Quoting: "Comments on the Wiki provide an idea of the choices the developers still have to make. For example, should the chevron at the right of the toolbar open a history page listing the most recently viewed pages, or -- as on desktop Firefox -- merely a list of most frequently typed URLs? And should "full screen" mode hide everything except the page being browsed, or retain the lowermost toolbar? Turner writes that while the user interfaces shown are merely starting points, 'going from the pretty pictures that Photoshop can produce to something that is functional is easy with the Mozilla platform. Building functional prototypes ... using only Javascript, XML, CSS, and images is really awesome.'"
The Internet

Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing 182

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-away-from-youtube dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has called upon its citizens to ration their internet usage. This comes after two of its three undersea fiber optic links were recently severed. The cut cables have caused communication difficulties for millions of people throughout the Middle East. Ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur was quoted as saying, 'People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"
Biotech

Carbon Nanotubes Can Exist Safely Inside the Body, Help Treat Cancer 86

Posted by Soulskill from the series-of-tubes dept.
iandoh writes "A team of scientists at Stanford University has tracked the movement of carbon nanotubes through the digestive systems of mice. They've determined that the nanotubes do not exhibit any toxicity in the mice, and are safely expelled after delivering their payload. As a result, the study paves the way toward future applications of nanotubes in the treatment of illnesses. Previous research by the same team demonstrated that nanotubes can be used to fight cancer. The nanotubes do this in two ways. One method involves shining laser light on the nanotubes, which generates heat to destroy cancer cells. Another method involves attaching medicine to the nanotubes, which are able to accurately 'find' cancerous cells without impacting healthy cells."
Security

Submission + - New botnet beats Storm, accounts for 32% of spam 4

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: A new botnet that distributes male sexual enhancement pills spam has overtaken the notorious Storm worm botnet as the largest single source of the world's spam according to security vendor Marshal. Dubbed Mega-D, the botnet currently accounts for 32 percent of all spam, 11 percent more than the Storm botnet which peaked at 21 percent in September 2007. The botnet started about 4 months ago but has been steadily increasing since then. It is also using news headlines to trick victims into opening the spam, a technique synonymous with the Storm worm.
PC Games (Games)

Unreal Tournament 3 Performance Revealed 85

Posted by Zonk from the winning-the-tourney dept.
Vigile writes "The Unreal Tournament 3 demo will be dropping sometime in the next two weeks. With a launch on the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and even an in-box Linux client it will definitely be one of the most widely-played titles this holiday. With an early take on the UT3 demo's performance, PC Perspective has put up an article that compares cards from NVIDIA and AMD in both single and dual-GPU configurations to see which are the best performers. It turns out that even mid-range cards are going to be more than capable of playing UT3 at impressive image quality levels."

Slashdot Top Deals

"The voters have spoken, the bastards..." -- unknown

Close