nixon66 - Slashdot User

Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design 175

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27, 2007 @03:43PM from the kill-ten-rats dept.

The creator of Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa and well-known designer Richard Garriot spoke at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England on the subjects of stagnating MMOG design and the NCSoft deal with Sony. His commentary on Massive game design is fairly direct: "If you look at the vast majority of MMOs that has come out since Ultima Online and Everquest, you can look at the features and they are almost exactly the same. Even though the graphics have got better and the interface is much slicker, fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged. Worse yet, there are many things that have become standard that I look at and even though they are powerful enough to encourage the behavior of people obsessed with playing these games, I don't think they are the right way of building the future."

Report Warns Against Well-Meaning Net Censorship 123

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27, 2007 @03:32PM from the happens-in-democracies-too dept.

athloi writes "A report entitled 'Governing the Internet,' was issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The document, which highlights the increasing environment of internet 'policing' around the world, characterized the practice as 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes -- democracies and dictatorships alike -- seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.' From the article: 'The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era "spy mania," and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online. Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of "dirt" and "lies."'"

University of Kansas Will Not Forward RIAA Letters 126

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27, 2007 @02:41PM from the not-quite-so-bad dept.

Bonewalker writes "Looks like the University of Kansas may not be as pro-RIAA (or anti-student) as initially assumed last week from our recent discussion. From the Chronicle article: 'Kansas officials told the student newspaper that they will not heed the recording industry's request to pass pre-litigation notices on to 14 students accused of music piracy. Many institutions have forwarded the letters -- which offer students a chance to settle file-sharing claims out of court at discounted rates -- but some have declined to do so, citing concerns over students' privacy.' Of course, this doesn't make that 'one-strike' policy any less flawed, but it shows that they aren't simply throwing their students under the RIAA bus, as one poster put it."

Journal Journal: Pay to the order of...: $e^(i*pi) +1 5

Journal by Otter on Friday July 27, 2007 @01:30PM

One of the Subversion heads received a bill from the Mathematical Association of America for $0.00. Naturally, he took the opportunity to send them a check for e^(i*pi)+1, which went tragically uncashed. Adding to the fun, it was check number 1729! (I'd provide clarification, but if you don't laugh at this as written, an explanation won't help...)

3.0GHz Phenom and 3-Way CrossFire Spotted 103

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27, 2007 @11:45AM from the beautiful-hardward-needs-place-to-live dept.

MojoKid writes "AMD revealed the clock speed of the Agena-based processor they showed to the press today yesterday in conference, and clocks in at 3.0GHz. There has been a lot of speculation that AMD wasn't able to push early Phenom samples to frequencies this high, but here is proof that at least some Phenoms clocked at 3.0GHz do exist. You may also notice that the system hit a Windows Experience index score of 5.9, which is the highest score possible. It should be noted that AMD talked about 4-way CrossFire as well (a 3-way CrossFire is shown online), and that the company has continued plans to produce discreet GPUs at all performance levels (mainstream — enthusiast), even after Fusion arrives."

Journal Journal: Queen's Brian May Finally Completes Astrophysics PhD 4

Journal by Otter on Thursday July 26, 2007 @10:17AM

Imperial College astrophysics grad student Brian May is about to defend his thesis Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud after a hiatus of several decades to play guitar with Queen. He finished collecting his final data at the Canary Islands observatory this week.

Comment Re:Not quite (Score 1) 85

by nixon66 on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @02:19PM (#14877006) Attached to: PS3 Delay May Hurt Current Gen Too

And customer service reps know whats going on? I think we'll see Sony hold their cards close, and hope to get it out this late spring, but you'd think they'd be pushing the ad campaign really hard for this if it was coming sooner rather than later.

Comment Re:The Rom? (Score 3, Informative) 81

by TheRedEye on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:48PM (#7684016) Attached to: Final Fantasy's Lost Translation, Greatest Hits

Or gee, maybe it's the exact version referred to by the article and the screenshots, which explains quite clearly that the game is complete and playable, with goofy Engrish.

Comment Re:Battery life (Score 2, Informative) 288

by ozonex on Monday November 18, 2002 @08:00PM (#4702400) Attached to: Dell Handhelds Released

From a Review at pcmag.com:

"The X5 boasts dual expansion slots for SecureDigital/MultiMedia cards and CompactFlash Type II cards. It has a removable, rechargeable battery rated at about 8 hours per charge. The value configuration comes with a synchronization cable. A docking cradle with a battery charging slot for a spare battery is a $40 (street) option and comes standard with the performance configuration."

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