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Linux Business

Canonical Close To $30M Critical Mass; Should Microsoft Worry? 625

Posted by timothy from the so-you're-saying-shuttleworth-has-business-acumen dept.
ruphus13 writes "Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, claims that the company is very close to the $30M mark, at which point, they will be a self-sustaining company. While people feel that this should not worry Microsoft, the real question is whether a 10,000 person effort on a failure like Vista can actually be the paradigm of a long-term strategy. From the article: 'Microsoft had 10,000 people [the article is unclear whether these were all developers, or administrative and support staff were factored in] working on Vista for a five year period ... huge profits in any given year can mean relatively little five years on. Canonical's self-sustaining revenue may not be threatening — but it leaves one wondering how sustainable Microsoft's development process really is.'"
Nintendo

Nintendo Files Patent For Game That Plays Itself 152

Posted by Soulskill from the say-what-now dept.
Kotaku points out a recent patent filed by Nintendo which automates gameplay unless the user specifically chooses to play a particular part of the game. Quoting: "The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today, looks to solve the issue of casual gamers losing interest in a game before they complete it, while still maintaining the interest of hardcore gamers. The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating."

Comment Re:Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly (Score 2, Interesting) 279

by John Carmack (#23266718) Attached to: The Science of Iron Man
Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

Classic Star Wars Trilogy Finally on DVD 673

Posted by samzenpus from the Han-shoots-first-again dept.
chinton writes "From starwars.com: 'In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie, as well as the original theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Sveasoft illegally uses OpenWRT 2

Journal by TheIndividual

Ok I admit it, I have been lazy recently. Not much had happened in the WRT scene in a while.
OpenWRT now has a great Web-Interface, DD-WRT got better on a daily basis while Sveasofts lost all its developers except James and the quality of their firmware releases declined even more.

Comment Re:Of course it's a slap on the wrist! (Score 1) 450

by perrinkog (#13164346) Attached to: Sony Agrees to Stop Payola
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but the details are a little off.
don't forget the other four titans Universal, EMI and Warner are conspicuosly absent from this article.
From the article:
"Spitzer has asked for documents from three other major recording industry names -- EMI, Warner Music Group and Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group. While Spitzer would not talk specifically about investigations into those companies, he said the payola problem goes "way beyond Sony BMG.""

With regards to the 10 mil, IANAL and I am not an Accountant, but I don't think that settlement money counts as a tax-write off in anyone's books.
"The $10 million will be distributed to not-for-profit entities and earmarked for music education programs, Spitzer said."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Freeman 1.04 released 1

Journal by TheIndividual

The new version of Freeman (1.04) is now available for download!

Last time Sveasoft apparently had unintentionally released an unprotected binary on which Freeman 1.02 was based. This time Sveasoft didn't make the same mistake, the MAC protection had to be hacked and removed.
Kudos to the people responsible for that!

User Journal

Journal Journal: Alchemy 1.0 released to the public 5

Journal by TheIndividual

Sorry for not updating this journal in a while. On April 21st, Sveasoft decided to drop work on Alchemy and release it to the public as it is. It is called final and it should be somewhat stable.

Also, after not releasing any source code to the subscribers for 5 months, they finally made the Alchemy sources available.

Both files will appear on the mirrors shortly.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Tag-free Sveasoft Alchemy pre7a 11

Journal by TheIndividual

Hello everybody,
thanks to two fellow suppliers I had the chance to make a tag-free version of Alchemy pre7a. You may notice the name change, apparently Sveasoft decided that having seven release candidates durin a feature freeze is a little embarassing.

This version, as always, has been tested before release. Please read the included text files for further information, post questions or comments in this forum thread

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