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Space

Submission + - TheSpaceGame.org: Design your route to Jupiter (thespacegame.org) 1

An anonymous reader writes: The Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency(ESA) is celebrating the World Space Week (4-10 October 2010) with the release of 'The Space Game', an online game for interplanetary trajectory design.

The Space Game (http://www.thespacegame.org/) is an online crowdsourcing experiment where you are given as the role of a mission designer to seek for the best path to travel through space. The interactive game, coded in HTML5, challenges the players to devise fuel-efficient trajectories to various bodies of the Solar System via a user-friendly interface. The aim of the experiment is get people from all ages and backgrounds to come up with better strategies that can help improving the effectiveness of the current computer algorithms.

As part of the events organized world wide for the space week, the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest cost of propellant. The best scores by 10 October will be displayed on the Advanced Concepts Team website and the three best designs will also receive some ESA prizes.

Submission + - Best School for Video Game Programming Degree? (gamecareerguide.com)

Proudrooster writes: Fellow Slashdotters. I have transitioned to teaching and my students have asked me what is the best path to take to work in the video game programming industry. Which would be of more benefit, pursing a Computer Science Degree or taking an accelerated program like those at FullSail? I have a CS degree and suspect that the CS degree would be of more benefit in the long run, but I would like anyone in the industry to share their wisdom and experience with my students trying to follow in your footsteps. If you could recommend some programs in your replies it would be appreciated.
Science

Submission + - Brilliant Pics of Bizarre Sea Critters (discovermagazine.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Today, scientists have announced the completion of the first ever Census of Marine Life. The colossal 10-year effort involved 2,700 researchers from 80 countries. To mark the occasion, Discover's blog 80beats has a photo gallery of some of the most marvelously strange sea creatures photographed in the course of the census. The blog post also explains some of the census's most important findings, including the dramatic decline of many commercially important large marine animals, and troubling new evidence of a decline in the phytoplankton that serves as the base of the marine food chain.
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - MGM and Warner Near on Deal for 'Hobbit' Films - N (nytimes.com)

CmdrTaco writes: "Jamie found an NYT story that says "After months of negotiation and delay, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are on the verge of an agreement that would allow the director Peter Jackson to begin shooting a two-part version of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" early next year.""

Submission + - Boy of 15 fitted with robotic heart (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you’re Dr Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart giving the boy another 20-25 years of life.

The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution.

Dr Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90 gram fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy’s left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt and connected to behind his left ear.

Submission + - New CCTV site in UK pays people to watch

pyrosine writes: Have you ever felt like being paid for watching live CCTV footage?
The BBC are reporting CCTV site, "Internet Eyes" is doing exactly that. Offering up to £1000 to people who report suspicious activity, the scheme seems an easy way to make money.
Not everyone is pleased with the scheme though, the Information Commissioner's Office is worried it will lead to voyeurism or misuse, but what difference does it make when you can find said webcams with a simple google search?
Space

US Lab Models Galaxy Cluster Merger 89

astroengine writes "The scales are mind-boggling and the physics is cutting edge, so how do you go about simulating the collision of two galactic clusters? Using some of the most powerful computers in the world, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Flash Center at the University of Chicago and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have done just that."
Music

Anti-Piracy Lawyers Caught Pirating Each Other 131

An anonymous reader writes "We would like to think that the lawyers that are prosecuting alleged copyright infringers are practicing what they preach, but it looks like one of the most high profile firms involved in such cases are just as guilty of stealing others' work as those who are downloading illegal media."

Comment Re:So, basically the parents are screwed? (Score 1) 420

I disagree. Parents should be able to raise their kids as they see fit, provided they aren't abusing them. Why is it any business of the state if I want to shield my kids from a lifestyle that I may not approve of?

You can. Just not in *PUBLIC* school. Want to shelter them from things that you find offensive then home school them. Don't complain if they have a hard time fitting into society later.

I disagree with the "Parents should be able to raise their kids as they see fit." The big problem here is the "their". They are not your property. They are supposed to independent human beings but they can't manage that initially and wouldn't know where to begin so you as parent get to take care of them and raise them. This does not mean mold them to be exactly the same as you. Don't push your beliefs or biases on them. Teach them to think critically on their own and they can decide what they believe.

Comment plenty of ways to monetize site (Score 2, Interesting) 329

Seems like there are plenty of ways to make money from last.fm users without charging them directly.

- a craigslist/ebay style setup to buy/sell/trade music/show tickets/whatever - take a cut from the ads/transaction fee - there are forums but these are token and there isn't a Buy/Sell section anywhere AFAIK.

- use music recommendations to sell people music directly rather than linking to amazon/itunes whatever. Particularly for smaller bands that can't get recording contracts - work to hook them up with gigs and sell merchandise through the site and take a cut - essentially cut out the record labels as middle men and still provide a service that makes it easy to find smaller bands.

- they have recommendations for events in the local area but I never see them handle ticket sales at all - well why the heck not - local shows are much smaller scale than giant stadium shows and they could get a larger turnout and

Of course setting up this kind of infrastructure costs money, particularly to do it globally, but use your user base to add events in the region and use them to review and categorize bands and just make it easy for bands to offer goods through the site. Charging users directly is a good way to lose them because there are plenty of free alternatives and we've all gotten used to not paying for radio. Music fans are among the most passionate - give them services they can actually use and take a reasonable cut and they'll probably embrace it in droves.

They just do not get social networking at all.

Comment I didn't like the ending (Score 2, Interesting) 852

I dislike using god and a hokey religion as an explanation for anything. I couldn't stand the last few episodes with Baltar babbling on about his angels. The show has always had a religious theme but I held out for a reasonable rational explanation of the head characters (something to do with cylon projection) and Kara.

Instead pooft she magically disappears into thin air, after magically entering the coordinates of a single magic planet in all of space from a magic song that her magically disappearing dad taught her when she was young and that Hera magically happens to know as well. How? What? Why?

I disliked the get rid of all our technology and live like the natives bit. Both the god explanation and the luddite attitude seem to me to be a diservice to many science fiction fans who overwhelmingly like science and technology and reject hokey explanations for things like flying spaghetti monsters. Seriously, what happens the next time someone needs to get a tooth pulled now that all their technology is gone.

I disliked the Cavil suicide bit because it seemed out of character along with actually listening to Baltar's stupid little speech on coexistence and angels. I'd like Boomer's redemption to not have been followed with her getting shot in the gut again. I didn't need to see Adama puking.

And finally, Tyrol is an idiot for not realizing that killing Cally was the nicest thing Tory or anyone else in the entire fleet did for him.

Comment Re:Network effects keep Ogg out (Score 1) 334

So Ogg is free. Even if the manufacturers got $5 for each machine they shipped Ogg on, most would not do it because it would not increase sales by any measurable amount, and it would force them to pay more for hardware. MP3 decoders are mass produced and very very cheap.

Except a lot of manufacturers DO support Ogg/Vorbis (hereafter ogg because we are all sick of the container vs codec posts).
http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware

That list is in fact out of date already because the Archos 5 I have very definitely supports ogg.

The elephant in the corner that refuses to join the party is the ipod. It can already decode ogg with Rockbox and there isn't any terribly good reason they couldn't support ogg natively.

Right now I can rip music from CDs to ogg and not have any issues except if someone else wants that music (which is illegal anyway right...) and has an ipod. Then one of us has to transcode it to something they can use.

If Apple did add native ogg support I imagine the format's adoption would increase substantially. You'd just be able to find a lot more (illegal or otherwise) ogg files floating around that you could toss on your ipod and have it Just Work.

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