Comment I'm confused, what is going on? (Score 1) 116
But what does this article have to do with the Beta?
Comment I'm not liking the beta (Score 0) 222
Way to go corporate overloards, not!
Misc Slashdot Anniversary: Silver City, NM, US
Making Ubuntu Look Like Windows 7 473
DeviceGuru writes "Although it won't help Linux run Windows-specific software applications, this easy hack produces an Ubuntu desktop that looks and feels a lot like Windows 7. It's particularly suitable for reviving older PCs or laptops on which the main activities will be web-browsing, email, document writing, and streaming music and videos from from the web. The process installs a Windows 7-like GNOME theme on an otherwise standard Ubuntu 10.04 installation, although it might work on other Linux distros with GNOME and appropriate other packages installed. Naturally all this begs the question: why would anybody want to do this? Why indeed!" People have been doing this sort of look-and-feel swap-out for years; it seems best to me as a practical joke.
Submission + - Ubisoft DRM problems remain unsolved (ubi.com) 1
ocean_soul writes: "More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial "always on-line" DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keeps growing daily. The reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promis of 24/7 monitoring of the servers. The moral of this story seems to be that it is a bad idea to buy a game just before a major holiday. Something to keep in mind for Christmas shopping..."
SolarPHP 1.0 Released 125
HvitRavn writes "SolarPHP 1.0 stable was released by Paul M. Jones today. SolarPHP is an application framework and library, and is a serious contender alongside Zend Framework, Symphony, and similar frameworks. SolarPHP has in the recent years been the cause of heated debate in the PHP community due to provocative benchmark results posted on Paul M. Jones' blog."
An Early Look At Civilization V 286
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Avataritis — On the Abundance of Customizable Game Characters 78
Martyn Zachary writes "The Slowdown has posted a new critique, 'Avataritis,' that attempts to portray the utilization of character customization as a pandemic, emotional response on behalf of publishers and developers to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by the enlarging, widening player base of video games. 'No mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.' The article discusses the emergence and role of gender criticism and research in relation to the recent proliferation of the customizable avatar. The story also dissects the very act of character creation, subsequently aiming to clarify several semantic distortions related to the terminology utilized in character creation, and in turn breaking apart the concepts of relatability and understandability, wholly differentiating the two. The overarching analysis is finally related to examples from the gaming marketplace, where many continue to corroborate apparent falsehoods and misunderstandings in relation to the utilization of the avatar. Ultimately, the writer hopes to dissuade readers, developers and players from believing that written narratives are going away as customization and emergent content are entering video games with full force."
Feed Techdirt: Verizon: Bandwidth Hogs Are A Tech Issue, Not A Legal Or Business Model Problem (techdirt.com)
While ATT has been siding with Hollywood in saying that file sharing is bad (so bad!) and that it needs to filter file sharing to deal with it, Verizon very clearly stated a few months ago that it didn't think that was appropriate. However, now it appears that Verizon has gone even further, in working with a P2P software maker to improve the efficiency of P2P to make it less of a bandwidth hog.
Now, there are a few points worth making on this announcement. First, part of it is clearly just hyping up one startup that is offering a "legal" P2P file sharing offering. Second, part of this is Verizon using the opportunity to tweak ATT and make itself look much more consumer friendly (something that doesn't often happen with Verizon, to be honest). Third, this hardly means (as some have been suggesting) that Verizon is "file sharing friendly." It only works with the one app that worked on this test with Verizon. However, what it does show is that Verizon recognizes that "bandwidth hogs" really are a technology issue that can be dealt with via technology solutions on the backend, rather than legal or business model methods that make life worse for consumers. That, alone, is a lesson that hopefully other companies in the space (and politicians) will learn.
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Now, there are a few points worth making on this announcement. First, part of it is clearly just hyping up one startup that is offering a "legal" P2P file sharing offering. Second, part of this is Verizon using the opportunity to tweak ATT and make itself look much more consumer friendly (something that doesn't often happen with Verizon, to be honest). Third, this hardly means (as some have been suggesting) that Verizon is "file sharing friendly." It only works with the one app that worked on this test with Verizon. However, what it does show is that Verizon recognizes that "bandwidth hogs" really are a technology issue that can be dealt with via technology solutions on the backend, rather than legal or business model methods that make life worse for consumers. That, alone, is a lesson that hopefully other companies in the space (and politicians) will learn.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
Feed Science Daily: Royal Corruption Is Rife In The Ant World (sciencedaily.com)
Submission + - SPAM: NASA to test emergency ability of new spacecraft 2
coondoggie writes: "NASA this week will show off the first mock up of its Orion space capsule ahead of the capsule's first emergency astronaut escape system test. NASA in late 2008, says it will jettison the full-size structural model off a simulated launch pad at the US Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The launch escape vehicle sits atop the Orion capsule which is slated to be bolted on an Ares rocket. The escape vehicle is made up of three solid rocket motors as well as separation mechanisms and canards, and should offer the crew an escape capability in the event of an emergency during launch, according to NASA.
[spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - RIAA Not Sharing Settlement Money With Artists
Klatoo55 writes: "Various artists are considering lawsuits in order to press for their share of the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars the RIAA has obtained from settlements with services such as Bolt, KaZaA and Napster. According to TorrentFreak's report on the potential action, there may not even be much left to pay out after monstrous legal fees are taken care of. The comments from the labels all claim that the money is on its way, and is simply taking longer due to difficulties dividing it all up."
Haiku OS Resurrects BeOS as Open Source 269
Technical Writing Geek writes "The Haiku project, which began shortly after the death of BeOS in 2001, aims to bring together the technical advantages of BeOS and the freedom of open source. 'The project has drawn dozens of contributors who have written over seven million lines of code. Although Haiku is nearly feature-complete, there are still numerous bugs that must be fixed before it is ready for day-to-day use. The design principles behind Haiku are very closely aligned with those of BeOS. The central goal of the Haiku project is to create an operating system that is ideally suited for use on the desktop--this differs significantly from Linux and other open-source operating systems which are intended for use in a diverse range of settings including server and embedded environments.'"
Submission + - Muslims Attempt to Censor Wikipedia
Nom du Keyboard writes: As reported on Fox News and The New York Times, some Muslims are attempting to censor Wikipedia because of images of Muhammad contained in the article about him. So does one religion get to tell the rest of the world how they must behave because they'll be offended otherwise, or does the Internet represent all views, even when that view may be offensive to some particular minority?
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Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid. - Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
