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Comment Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score 1) 893

by themak (#18705661) Attached to: The End is Nigh for XP
Yeah, it's a stupid idea. Here's what I should have said: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555444 Also, does your machine directly download updates, or does one of your companies servers hold them? Preventing IE7 from entering the update queue shouldn't be up to the user and patches should be approved before sending out.
Games

Miyamoto Gives Advice to Game Design Hopefuls 57

Posted by Zonk from the learning-from-the-zen-master dept.
grenada writes "As reported by Ars Techncia, Shigeru Miyamoto has some good advice for aspiring game developers. Instead of telling kids to focus on video games, he actually says that it's beneficial to diversify your education and personal interests. He says that meeting people and familiarizing yourself to different fields will give you the best perspective of the world in the long run, which will help in your game-developing career. 'While young people are still students, I think it is important for them to not just focus on something like programming or just focus on video games. Instead they should do things that you can only do while you are in college. Get out, meet people, and talk to people.'" As a follow-up, N'Gai Croal at Newsweek has up an interview he did with Miyamoto-san entitled the Artist's Way.
Windows

Microsoft Sued Over Vista Marketing 556

Posted by Zonk from the my-toaster-is-vista-capable dept.
daviddennis writes "According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a lawsuit alleges that Microsoft engaged in deceptive practices by letting PC makers promote hardware as 'Windows Vista Capable' even though they knew it could not run most of Vista's widely-promoted features. Microsoft responds by saying that the differences have been promoted with one of the most extensive marketing pushes in company history. 'In sum, Microsoft engaged in bait and switch -- assuring consumers they were purchasing Vista Capable machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped-down operating system lacking the functionality and features that Microsoft advertised as Vista ... As a result, the suit said, people were buying machines that couldn't run the real Vista.'"
Businesses

Former Red Octane Staff Prohibited from Music Games 76

Posted by Zonk from the k-thnx-bye dept.
In what seems to be some ugly fallout from the Guitar Hero / RedOctane purchase, former Octane employees John Tam and Corey Fong are now legally prohibited from working on rhythm games. Activision has successfully brought suit against the men, arguing that they were using proprietary information gained under employ at the corporation to aid their new venture. As part their work after leaving RedOctane, Tam and Fong had begun working with the Reverb and The Ant Commandos groups on a demo for a dance/guitar game. "The demo incorporated elements of Guitar Hero and StepMania, a free dance game for the PC that supports dancepads and includes a step editor. The pair used it to solicit partners and funding for Lodestone Entertainment, the injunction states. As part of the injunction, the pair is prohibited from distributing or using the demo in any capacity and acting on or disclosing any Activision trade secrets. They are also prevented from taking steps to develop drum-, guitar-, or synthesizer-based games for the next year, nor can they work on any Xbox 360 controllers for Guitar Hero II until six months after the game's release this week. "
Wii

Submission + - Wii Doing What Nintendo Wanted It To

Submitted by
superdan2k
superdan2k writes: "When Nintendo brought the Wii to market, one of their stated goals was to get people who didn't normally play video games using their console. Based on this article from the AP, it seems they've made some headway in capturing the senior citizen market. With the Wii's price point, and it being a good way to get people engaged in physical exercise, it's easy to envision it catching on with other retirement homes beyond the one mentioned in the article. Now that it's expanding beyond the 'typical' video game demographic, has the Wii taken the first steps toward winning the console war?"
Biotech

Submission + - Single human gene gives mice tri-color vision

Submitted by
maynard
maynard writes: "Scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute working in collaboration have published a study in the peer reviewed journal Science showing that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-color vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colorblind. The scientists speculate that even mammalian brains from animals that have never evolved color vision are flexible enough to interpret new color sense information with just a simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-color vision in some women. From the article:

The experiments were designed to determine whether the brains of the genetically altered mice could efficiently process sensory information from the new photoreceptors in their eyes. Among mammals, this more complex type of color vision has only been observed in primates, and therefore the brains of mice did not need to evolve to make these discriminations.


The new abilities of the genetically engineered mice indicate that the mammalian brain possesses a flexibility that permits a nearly instantaneous upgrade in the complexity of color vision, say the study's senior authors, Gerald Jacobs and Jeremy Nathans.
"
Networking

Beef Up Your Wireless Router 189

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-make-it-wear-a-pretty-dress dept.
Doctor High writes "Josh Kuo's article Beef Up Your Wireless Router talks about the OpenWRT embedded Linux distro for the the Linksys WRT series wireless routers (and more). The article lays out some of the amazing things you can do with your Linux-enabled wireless router such as using it as a VoIP gateway, a wireless hotspot, or even an encrypted layer 2 tunnel endpoint for remote troubleshooting."
Security

SSL Optimization Over WAN Needs Scrutiny 70

Posted by kdawson from the trusting-the-box dept.
coondoggie writes with word of the expansion of WAN optimization appliances to handle SSL traffic and the security concerns this brings up. From the article: "With more and more WAN optimization vendors extending their capabilities to include encrypted traffic, corporate IT executives have a decision to make: Should they trust the security these devices provide? Rather than passing through SSL sessions between clients and servers located in remote data centers, some WAN optimization gear can terminate the SSL sessions, shrink the traffic, and re-encrypt it for the next leg of the trip. These chains of encrypted sessions introduce potential vulnerabilities that different vendors address in different ways. SSL traffic represents a growing percentage of total traffic on WAN links, according to Forrester Research. So SSL support in WAN optimization appliances will become more important to businesses that want to keep traffic secure while minimizing the size of their WAN links."
Privacy

A Network Sniffer On Steroids 129

Posted by kdawson from the data-seepage dept.
QuantumCrypto writes "Errata has developed a new network sniffer, dubbed 'Ferret,' that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SNMP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more. 'You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you,' said Robert Graham, Errata's chief executive. Errata has released the source code to this version 1.0, 'feature-poor and buggy' tool on its site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said."

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