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Comment Re:Flagrun! (Score 1) 135

There's a version of Avanti which has the offense start with the flag, and have to move it to the point, and which point it is changes over time. There's also a one-way CTF map called stb_cowtown which has only one team trying to get the flag, and the other team defending, and a total of 4 flags on the map.

Comment Re:Someone actually listens to NPR? (Score 1) 128

Without knowing specifically what the questions are that they were asked, it's impossible to tell whether this is relevant or the result of your usual right-wing persecution complex being fueled with a hackjob poll and repeated ad nauseam without any of the details (I've seen this sort of figure cited multiple times but never seen the original poll it supposedly came from) until everyone else believes it because it's been repeated so often.

Let's take the first one you listed- gays- and run with it.

Do you believe that homosexuality is an abomination?
Yes (Conservative)
No (Liberal)

Oh look, the media has a liberal bias! (We're not going to mention the fact that if you phrase the question like this the entire population would have a liberal bias.)

When it comes to something like this, always, always look at the original from the pollster; or else ignore it because there's no way anyone else can tell whether it's credible or not.

Comment Re:wow (Score 1) 844

Except, of course, that Jesus also says plenty of things that are hardly peaceful- "Sell your robes and buy a sword", that he "brings not peace but a sword"; and of course, that nasty little bit about how he plans to separate families...

Comment Re:wow (Score 4, Insightful) 844

There are at least a half-dozen quotes in the bible saying that unbelievers should be killed, and a bunch more saying that people who perform certain actions (which aren't unethical from a secular perspective) should be killed. And of course, there's "be not yoked with unbelievers".

It's not a Quran-specific thing. All the Abrahamic religions have no respect whatsoever for those outside of the religion. The mentality boils down to nothing more than "hate everyone who's not one of us".

Space

Lunar Eclipse Next Tuesday Morning 50

Raver32 writes "Tuesday morning, Aug. 28 brings us the second total lunar eclipse of 2007. Those living in the Western Hemisphere and eastern Asia will be able to partake in at least some of this sky show. The very best viewing region for viewing this eclipse will fall across the Pacific Rim, including the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand and eastern Australia. All these places will be able to see the complete eclipse from start to finish. Europeans will miss out on the entire show, as the Moon will be below the horizon during their mid and late morning hours."
Printer

Submission + - InkJet Printers lying, or mistaken? (arstechnica.com)

akkarin writes: An interesting 'study' (how scientific, I wonder?), is calling InkJet Printers "filthy, lying thieves".
They claim that even the most advanced printers misinform their users of their ink levels, which is wasting 100s of pages worth of ink. From the article:


A new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges when their printers are telling them they're out of ink, not when they necessarily are out of ink.
Hype, or truth? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070618-stud y-inkjet-printers-are-filthy-lying-thieves.html

Games

Redistricting Videogame Shows Problems in the System 322

An anonymous reader writes "This is a cool redistricting game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet." It's crazy that gerrymandering is actually good fodder for a video game.
Programming

Submission + - Joining an existing Open Source Project

Tathagata writes: I have been using GNU/Linux for quite sometime now. Though I'm from Computer Science background, getting into a project that really involves you into programming was not possible, as people(read teachers) run away, if you utter the word "linux". Being least bothered about mentoring an exciting project, they would suggest you to get settled with visual basic, .NET, — and would prefer a 24 hour solution when it comes to programming.(I'm a student in my final year, from a West Bengal, India). So my programming endeavours have remained limited to writing few lines of C/C++, Java. For last few days I've been googling, and trying to read how to join an existing open source project, and avoid reinventing the wheel by starting yet another. I read people suggesting to start by submitting patches, fixing bugs, becoming package maintainer — but most are overloaded with jargon like upstream/downstream, nightly builds, etc. Added to that how does joining the mailing list, or irc channel help when you don't even understand their slangs, forget about the tech discussion? Distributed/centralised scm, track, bugzilla, launchpad, with sourceforge or freshmeat laden with an unlimited number of projects regarding everything you have ever come across — it quite an overwhelming world to step in. Could you suggest a road map, links to essential tools or a few projects, for people like me, who would want to improve their skills by contributing FOSS?
Power

Submission + - Building an energy efficient always-on PC?

An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I find it necessary to leave my home PC running 24/7, for things like web or ftp servers, bittorrent, or simply to make sure I don't miss any messages on IRC or my instant messaging client. It has been about 3 years since I built my current PC, and keeping it running all the time uses a lot of juice. With my next PC I would like to do what I can to keep the power-consumption to a minimum, without sacrificing processing power or other features. What should I look for when choosing components for my PC, and what other ways are there to keep the power consumption down?

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