54195395
submission
alancronin writes:
Few video games have had the impact that Doom has on the medium as a whole. While it wasn’t the first first-person shooter out there, it was certainly one of the earliest hits of the genre, due in no small part to its revolutionary multiplayer. Today, that game is 20 years old. Made in Mesquite by a bunch of young developers including legends John Carmack and John Romero, Doom went on to “transform pop culture,” as noted by the sub-title of the book Masters of Doom.
46770495
submission
alancronin writes:
Four decades ago the Ethernet protocol made its debut as a way to connect machines in close proximity, today it is the networking layer two protocol of choice for local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) and everything in between. For many people Ethernet is merely the RJ45 jack on the back of a laptop, but its relative ubiquity and simplicity belie what Ethernet has done for the networking industry and in turn for consumers and enterprises. Ethernet has in the space of 40 years gone from a technology that many in the industry viewed as something not fit for high bandwidth, dependable communications to the default data link protocol.
46592795
submission
alancronin writes:
While a fresh new generation of BlackBerry phones fight a ferocious battle for third place in the smartphone race, BlackBerry's other big business remains in a great position in its red-hot market, Mobile Device Management (MDM). At BlackBerry Live 2013 in Orlando this week, the company rolled out a major update to BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) and deepened its commitment to making BES a multiplatform solution that now deeply secures its two leading smartphone competitors. Ironically, the trend that brutally undercut BlackBerry phones during the past five years—the "bring your own device" (BYOD) movement—is now driving significant sales of BES, the company's backend software. At BlackBerry Live, the company released version 10.1 of BES. BES 10.1 will support a powerful new module that will launch at the end of June called Secure Work Space, which brings BlackBerry's high security mobile solution to Android and iOS. "Our customers have been asking, 'Can you just take what you've done on BlackBerry and put it on iOS and Android?'" said Pete Devenyi, BlackBerry's SVP of Enterprise Software.
46191417
submission
alancronin writes:
Valve have released Portal for Linux through the Steam platform. If you have a copy of the Windows version you will automatically have a copy of it for Linux in your account. There are also rumors of Portal 2 coming soon.
46191381
submission
alancronin writes:
Users of Android, Chrome OS, Linux, and iOS devices may not realize it, but FreeType open source software is used to render fonts on more than a billion such devices. Not only that, but the FreeType project this week got a significant update from none other than Adobe and Google. Specifically, Google and Adobe on Wednesday released into beta the Adobe CFF engine, an advanced Compact Font Format (CFF) rasterizer that “paves the way for FreeType-based platforms to provide users with richer and more beautiful reading experiences,” as Google put it in an online announcement on the Google Open Source Blog. The new rasterizer is now included in FreeType version 2.4.12. Though it's currently off by default, the technology is “vastly superior” to the old CFF engine and will replace it in the next FreeType release, the project says.
45334935
submission
alancronin writes:
Stephen Hawking, one of the world's greatest physicists and cosmologists, is once again warning his fellow humans that our extinction is on the horizon unless we figure out a way to live in space. Not known for conspiracy theories, Hawking's rationale is that the Earth is far too delicate a planet to continue to withstand the barrage of human battering. "We must continue to go into space for humanity," Hawking said today, according to the Los Angeles Times. "We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."
44329623
submission
alancronin writes:
Researchers have unearthed a decade-long espionage operation that used the popular TeamViewer remote-access program and proprietary malware to target high-level political and industrial figures in Eastern Europe.
TeamSpy, as the shadow group has been dubbed, collected encryption keys and documents marked as "secret" from a variety of high-level targets, according to a report published Wednesday by Hungary-based CrySyS Lab. Targets included a Russia-based Embassy for an undisclosed country belonging to both NATO and the European Union, an industrial manufacturer also located in Russia, multiple research and educational organizations in France and Belgium, and an electronics company located in Iran. CrySyS learned of the attacks after Hungary's National Security Authority disclosed intelligence that TeamSpy had hit an unnamed "Hungarian high-profile governmental victim."
43752445
submission
alancronin writes:
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has been temporarily put into “safe mode,” as scientists monitoring from Earth try to fix a computer glitch, the US space agency said. Scientists switched to a backup computer Thursday so that they could troubleshoot the problem, said to be linked to a glitch in the original computer’s flash memory. “We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” said Richard Cook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates Curiosity.
43388755
submission
alancronin writes:
Similar to Fabien Sanglard's previous code reviews of other games such as the Quake and Doom line of games comes a review of the code base of Duke Nukem 3D (split out over 4 pages). This will be a very good read for anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of a highly addictive game or anyone that wants to learn more about game design.
42529403
submission
alancronin writes:
Intel has been planning to make its Ireland base one of three global manufacturing sites for its 14nm chips since May last year, and its now been given the okay by Ireland's lead planning agency. The new $4 billion plant will create around 4,300 jobs for the region in Co. Kildare, where Intel already has around 4,000 on staff. The two-year plan involves redeveloping its existing operation, expanding and shifting to make its smaller, more efficient 14nm process. Intel's plans don't stop there, however. It still plans to roll out 10nm products sometime in 2015.
42006847
submission
alancronin writes:
In conjunction with BBC's recent astronomy television program: Stargazing Live comes a citizen science project to analyze images of Mars. Zooniverse has setup a site that allows people to explore the surface of Mars in incredible detail with pictures taken from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image Mars with resolutions of 0.3 m/pixel (about 1 foot), resolving objects below a meter across.
37147245
submission
alancronin writes:
A new leaked photo of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, or the "London," promises a completely different looking BlackBerry than the world is used to. According to the BlackBerry news site N4BB, a photo of the device (which is designed by Porsche) shows a slender touch-screen phone that is the color "gun metal." Several apps are shown in the photo, including Facebook, BBM, and DocsToGo. Another leak posted by BlackBerryItalia.it shows a video (see below) of the smartphone with a removable 1800mAh LS1 battery. The London is the first BlackBerry 10 and is slated to have a TI OMAP dual-core CPU running at 1.5GHz, as well as 1GB of RAM, 16GB storage, and an 8-megapixel camera.
36426129
submission
alancronin writes:
Attention all gamers! Humble Bundle is back with a new package of cross-platform games for the very fair price of whatever you think it's worth.
The latest bundle includes the games BIT.TRIP BEAT, Fieldrunners, SpaceChem, and Uplink along with each of their soundtracks. Plus, if donate above the average price, which is currently $6.07, you can also get the puzzle game Spirits. All games in this Humble Bundle are compatible with Android, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
31223675
submission
alancronin writes:
Computer and IT giant Dell said today it will acquire privately held Wyse Technology, a company that specializes in what it calls “cloud client computing.”
