alistair - Slashdot User

Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3 240

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 23, 2010 @03:38AM from the let's-blame-ubisoft dept.

Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "

Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game 287

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 09, 2010 @07:54AM from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @11:03PM from the like-a-banana dept.

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 03, 2009 @02:20AM from the shadows-with-shadows dept.

MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."

Comment Battery Concerns (Score 2, Interesting) 364

by alistair on Wednesday July 01, 2009 @05:12AM (#28539913) Attached to: Some Overheating 3GS iPhones Glow Pink

Having just upgraded from the first iPhone to the 3GS I have to say I am disappointed with the battery life on the new handset, it's certainly not the improvement I was expecting from reviews. With Wi-Fi and location services turned off and very light usage I can get just about 2 days out of it, normal use sees it being recharged every night which is inferior to the old model. I was contemplating returning it to O2 but before I did that I wanted to know if there are any standard tests to see if my battery is that much worse than normal, e.g. the phone plays a movie for 5.5 hours at 75% brightness or play music through headphones for 9 hours from full charge etc. Any thoughts? Reviews also seemed to suggest there was a better battery meter in this model but I haven't seen it, 20% charge remaining still seems to mean run for a recarger, not you have 20% of the usage time you would get from a full charge left.

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