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Science

Using Infrared Cameras To Find Tastiness of Beef 108

Posted by Soulskill from the i-use-a-fork dept.
JoshuaInNippon writes "Might we one day be able to use our cell phone cameras to pick out the best piece of meat on display at the market? Some Japanese researchers seem to hope so. A team of scientists is using infrared camera technology to try and determine the tastiest slices of high-grade Japanese beef. The researchers believe that the levels of Oleic acid found within the beef strongly affect the beef's tenderness, smell, and overall taste. The infrared camera can be tuned to pick out the Oleic acid levels through a whole slab, a process that would be impossible to do with the human eye. While the accuracy is still relatively low — a taste test this month resulted in only 60% of participants preferring beef that was believed to have had a higher level of Oleic acid — the researchers hope to fine tune the process for market testing by next year."
Role Playing (Games)

Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons 189

Posted by Soulskill from the lightning-bolt dept.
An anonymous reader sends in a nostalgic piece about Dungeons & Dragons and the influence it's had on games and gamers for the past 36 years. Quoting: "Maybe there was something in the air during the early '70s. Maybe it was historically inevitable. But it seems way more than convenient coincidence that Gygax and Arneson got their first packet of rules for D&D out the door in 1974, the same year Nolan Bushnell managed to cobble together a little arcade machine called Pong. We've never had fun quite the same way since. Looking back, these two events set today's world of gaming into motion — the Romulus and Remus of modern game civilization. For the rest of forever, we would sit around and argue whether games should let us do more or tell us better stories."
The Almighty Buck

Virtual Currency Becomes Real In South Korea 203

Posted by Soulskill from the license-to-print-money dept.
garylian writes "Massively is reporting that the South Korean Supreme Court has stated that virtual currency is the equivalent of real-world money. For those of you who might not be drawing the link, the core there is that selling in-game currency for real money is essentially just an exchange of currency and perfectly legal in South Korea. This could have sweeping implications for RMT operations the world over, not to mention free-to-play games and... well, online games in general. The official story is available online from JoongAng Daily."
Software

Drupal's Dries Buytaert On Drupal 7 55

Posted by Soulskill from the on-the-horizon dept.
itwbennett writes "The Drupal community has been working on Drupal 7 for two years, and there are 'hundreds of changes' to show for it, says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in an interview with ITworld's Esther Schindler on the occasion of Drupal 7 going into Alpha test this week. Most notable for end users are 'some massive usability improvements,' says Buytaert, while site builders will see the greatest changes in the Drupal Content Construction Kit (CCK), which has been moved into the Drupal core. But one thing that hasn't changed is the not-so-easy upgrade path. 'The upgrade path for a Drupal site has never been really easy, to be honest,' Buytaert says. 'We do break backwards compatibility. It's a little bit painful because it requires all of the contributed modules — and there's 4,000-5,000 of them — to make changes.' But Buytaert doesn't think that's all bad. 'Innovation is key. Backwards compatibility limits innovation,' Buytaert contends. 'The rule we have is: We'll break the API if it makes a better API, and if it allows good innovation and progress to be made. Also: The second rule is that we'll never break people's data. We'll always provide an upgrade path for the data.'"

Comment aMSN (Score 4, Funny) 861

by Placebo Messiah (#18547575) Attached to: What is the Best Bug-as-a-Feature?
aMSN has a cool bug that pops a window open on your end as soon as someone clicks on your name on their end

it's fun to pre-empt conversations with girls:

me: hey how's it goin?

her: OMG I was just thinking about you

me: ya right

her: I'm serious!

me: *gush* (L)
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - when Macs break

Submitted by
cyber-dragon.net
cyber-dragon.net writes: "I have long been a staunch supporter of Apple and Macs, bordering on but not quite a fan boy. My recent experience with trying to bring them into my department at work has been dissapointing. We had a Mac Pro (the big quad processor monster) die after four days. Ok, it happens, everything else has worked flawlessly. I even delt with the inevitable teasing about the siny new Mac being a lemon.
Well after almost four hours dealing with Apple Care, three hours dropping off and picking up my computer at different stores as per thier instructions trying to get this done quickly... I am beginning to wonder if Apple really wants business customers to rely on these machines. Much as I may dislike Dell like the rest of you... when my Linux box died it was fixed in four hours and I spent maybe 20 mintes of my time setting up the repair. I have spent seven hours of my time so far on this Mac and it still will not power up. Is this just me or have other people lost critical business machines to the depths of Apple Care inefficiency and lack of business level support?"

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