Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Feed Macworld: Game Room: EVE Online (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed
You'll need some patience to deal with the performance issues from the Mac version of this massively multiplayer online game (which the developers are trying to correct). But your patience will be rewarded with an immersive, vast, and incredible online game.

Feed Engadget: Nintendo support recommends Wiimote abuse to puzzled caller (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming

Controller abuse has always been a mainstay of the video gaming existence -- no need to blame your thumbs when there's this hunk of plastic to chuck at the floor -- but who knew Nintendo was working such violence into its own official support curriculum? Wired's Russ Neumeier gave Nintendo support a ring when one of his Wiimotes stopped sensing motion and none of the usual fixes seemed to work. After explaining his situation, the Nintendo rep asked Russ smack the controller into his hand, button side down, two or three times. After being assured that she wasn't kidding, Russ did as he was told and was awarded with a fully functional Wiimote. We could see why Nintendo wouldn't go shouting about this "fix" on its official support literature, but it has us wondering if "blow into the cartridge, whack side of NES, insert cartridge, repeat" was the Nintendo-approved method all along.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments


Feed Engadget: Taiwanese solar car may not appeal to the fashion conscious (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Transportation

Anyone can claim to be a friend of the environment while proudly jaunting about in a sporty Tesla, so what really separates the hardcore greens from the Hollywood posers is the willingness to shell out nearly twenty-five grand for a no-frills, no hype (and no doors?) solar-powered runabout. It must be this dedicated demographic that a team of builders and racers from Taiwan's National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences are targeting with the vehicle you see above, which is based on their successful design that ranked second of fifty cars in the latest Australian World Solar Challenge. Unlike their single-passenger, 145kph (90mph) race car, however, the multi-seat commercial ride is speculated to max out at around 70kph (43mph); fine for short city commutes, but not really practical for road trips (and with the three-hour battery, forget about cruising around much at night). Still, those ready to fork over an estimated 800,000 New Taiwanese Dollars ($24,617) for a vehicle that only a short-sighted mother could love should be able to order one as early as next year -- probably not tomorrow, though.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments


Linux Business

Submission + - Microsoft Paid Novell $356 Million in '07

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: At the end of this piece at Channelweb.com, it's reported that Microsoft paid Novell $355.6 million last year as part of their "interoperability" deal. It's no small wonder, then, that Novell executives are saying the deal has been a huge success so far.
Wii

Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games 196

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the playing-with-your-own-toys dept.
arbourp writes to mention that hackers Michael Steil and Felix Domke have demonstrated a way to hack the Wii that makes running homebrew code much easier. "The hack advances the possibility of running homebrew code with access to full system resources on the device, not just programs that Nintendo has sanctioned. Such games might be developed to run from a DVD drive, at least in theory. No such games are available as yet and Nintendo may respond by attempting to revoke compromised encryption keys. However history shows such countermeasures are likely to ultimately prove futile."

Stephen Colbert vs The Hungarian Government 554

Posted by CmdrTaco from the under-our-skin-we're-all-colberican dept.
jefu writes "The Hungarian government is sponsoring an internet vote to name a new bridge. So far naming the bridge after acter Chuck Norris has been the most popular. However, last night Stephen Colbert (of Comedy Central's "Colbert Report") suggested that viewers vote to name the bridge after him. Remembering the effect that a Colbert segment had had on Wikipedia, I visited the voting page (in Hungarian when it works) soon after that and it was completely non-responsive. This morning (8:00 Thursday Pacific time) it is showing a "Horrible exception" and a Jetspeed/tomcat stack trace. " I believe Colbert's straight-talking sensibilities have earned him far more than just a bridge in whatever continent Hungaria is in. Instead I think we should consider renaming one of our lesser used states as an honor more appropriate to his grippy contributions to America. We're not doing anything with Colorado these days anyway, but imagine the appeal of a new and improved state with a virile name like Colberado. Book your tickets today!

Microsoft Softens Up On Competition 150

Posted by Zonk from the letting-other-people-through-the-door dept.
shaneFalco writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft, prompted in part by their recently legal woes in the European Union will allow vendors to set non-Microsoft applications as the default on Windows computers. This initiative is part of a dozen 'tenets to promote competition' that the company is adopting in the face of stiff criticism of business tactics in Europe. Other tents include not retaliating against businesses that promote non-MS software, and a relaxing of restrictions on licensing Windows-related patents." From the article: "The principles might mean that some manufacturers will promote search engines other than Microsoft's own, Mr Smith said - an apparent reference to Google, which has looked to be on a collision course with Microsoft over search engines. 'There are certain steps we can't take that would have been permitted a decade ago,' the executive added." We touched on this announcement yesterday, but details on the '12 tenets' were less clear at that point.

Microsoft to Supply Electronics to Formula 1 433

Posted by samzenpus from the blue-car-of-death dept.
Yooden_Vranx writes "speedtv.com reports that beginning in 2008, Microsoft will be the sole supplier of Engine Control Units to Formula 1. Apparently, moving to a single supplier is part of the FIA's (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) attempts to cut costs. The article does not clarify whether this cost reduction is enabled by cutting back on tech support, what percentage of the engine's power will be required to run all the 'features' embedded in the device, or whether 'crash' will now refer primarily to software behavior rather than driving incidents."

The Man Behind MySpace 186

Posted by Zonk from the hungry-like-dewolfe dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has an article looking at the life of Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder of the popular MySpace community site. The article details some of his previous work history, and the thought process that went into creating the site." From the article: "They pinched the best bits of everybody else's sites (Craigslist, Evite, MP3.com) and put them together in a manner that made sense. Unconcerned with technological bells and whistles and geeky one-upmanship, they instead set out to appeal to the people they knew and, beyond them, the youth tribes of middle America."

Mother Nature's Design Workshop 72

Posted by Zonk from the go-forth-my-insect-minions dept.
abb_road writes "Scientists creating new surveillance and defense technologies are studying the insect world for inspiration. Biomimetic researchers working on devices ranging from 360 degree lenses to mine-disabling robots are using biological principals as the backbone of their work. From the article: 'The tried-and-true designs of many insects are the product of millions of years of evolution. Even so, they are not perfect models. Natural selection isn't just a matter of physiological perfection, but how an organism's traits suit it for a particular environment, scientists say. For this reason, Bandyopadhyay stresses it is important not to just copy nature's work, but to take the best parts of it and apply it elsewhere.'"

SCO to Unix developers, We want you back 427

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the buying-friends dept.
NoGuffCheck writes "CRN is reporting that Darl McBride is looking to get Unix developers back onboard with cash incentives for completing training in SCO's new mobile application kit; EdgeBuilder. It doesn't stop there; there's a 12-cylinder BMW or $100,000 dollars for the development of the best wireless application."

Techies Asked To Train Foreign Replacements 765

Posted by Zonk from the have-a-good-trip dept.
Makarand writes "David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Bank of America (BofA) is moving thousands of tech jobs to India and has asked its techies to train their Indian replacements or risk losing severance pay. Although there is nothing in writing that says precisely this, the employees have been made clear about this responsibility in their meetings. BofA is outsourcing tech work to Indian companies whose employees do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid. According to an estimate, outsourcing has allowed the bank to save about $100 million over the past five years."

Slashdot Top Deals

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. -- Robert Benchley

Close