Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Bostrom has an interesting interpretation on why the failure of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for the past half-century is good news and why the discovery of life on Mars could foretell our doom. Bostrom postulates a 'Great Filter,' which can be thought of as a probability barrier and consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems."

SlinkySausage writes "Linux is burdened with 'enterprise crap' that makes it run poorly on desktop PCs, says kernel developer Con Kolivas. Kolivas recently walked away from years of work on the kernel in despair. APCmag.com has a lengthy interview with Kolivas, who explains what he sees is wrong with Linux from a performance perspective and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computers."

The folks at XFire passed on a link to their recent interview with the people at Harmonix. Now working on hit of E3, Rock Band, the company's senior designer at Harmonix, Community Developer, and Associate Producer answered questions from the XFire audience about the upcoming title. "shrouded: Can you tell us about the challenges of designing the drumset? ... Answer: The hardest part was satisfying all of the stuff we wanted - we're a company of musicians, including a sizeable chunk of drummers. I think we spent at least half a year making sure that the pedal felt almost exactly like a real drum pedal, and not just some switch. We also had a bunch of non-negotiable things that we had to get in, like using real drumsticks. I could go on forever, but the basic summary is that from day 1 we wanted this to be as close to an electronic kit as possible, with as few compromises as possible."

Kelson writes to mention Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took the stage this week at the Web 2.0 expo and in addition to discussing pressing issues have declared their intent to avoid another browser war. All the panelists agreed that security was the largest concern currently facing browser developers. "Brendan Eich, the chief technology officer at Mozilla, said that security was hard and always will be. 'I don't think we should take security lightly; it's an end-to-end problem and we have to step outside the current model to win on this front,' he said. For his part, Chris Wetherell, a software engineer at Google, said one of the scenarios that kept him awake at night was offline access to the browser and what that meant from a security perspective, particularly on the user-to-user front."

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Microsoft received help from the National Security Agency in protecting the Vista operating system from worms and viruses. The Agency aimed to help as many people as they could, and chose to assist Vista with good reason: the OS still has a 90 percent lock on the PC market, with some 600 million Vista users expected by 2010. From the article: 'The Redmond, Wash., software maker declined to be specific about the contributions the NSA made to secure the Windows operating system ... Microsoft said this is not the first time it has sought help from the NSA. For about four years, Microsoft has tapped the spy agency for security expertise in reviewing its operating systems, including the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.'"

cliffski writes "According to the BBC website the UK govt has just given the go ahead to two large offshore wind-farm projects. Between them the schemes would produce enough renewable electricity to power about one million households. The larger London Array project covers 144 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex and will be the world's biggest when it is completed. The £1.5bn scheme will have 341 turbines rising from the sea about 12 miles (20km) off the Kent and Essex coasts, as well as five offshore substations and four meteorological masts"

christian.einfeldt writes "Our very own Roblimo Miller was invited to an all-expenses-paid tour of the Microsoft campus because he is supposedly 'not friendly' to Microsoft. Writes Roblimo: 'I came away with a sense that Microsoft doesn't currently have a clear sense of what Microsoft should be and where Microsoft should be going... I also think, from what I heard during my visit and what other Microsoft employees and customers have told me at other times, that it has degenerated into a series of disconnected fiefdoms that aren't all moving in the same direction.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

GillBates0 writes "CNN is carrying a story about a school in Boston which has have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable. According to the article, some elementary schools in other states have similarly banned "unsupervised contact sports". A parent was quoted as saying that her son feels safer now and that she'd witnessed enough 'near collisions.'" See, it's not just dangerous virtual games that are harmful to children!

There have been many analyst predictions in the early days of the next-gen consoles, but rarely have they been so direct. DFC Intelligence President David Cole has gone on record saying there's a very real possibility Sony could lose this leg of the race to Microsoft and Nintendo. From the article: "Sony's clear strength is the first factor: brand strength and current market position. The glaring weakness of the PlayStation 3 is price, especially when compared to the competition. However, it is more than just an issue of whether the PlayStation brand strength can justify a premium price. Of course, Sony would like to point to the hardware horsepower and extra features like Blu-ray. The problem is that is only one factor in our forecasting matrix. Furthermore, with the competition having features like Xbox Live and the Nintendo Wii controller, the PS3 may not have that much of an advantage in the elusive 'Wow Factor.'" 1up Editor Sam Kennedy has further musings on this subject, with Next Generation reporting that there may be a problem getting high yields in the PS3 production process.

Ant writes "NewsForge (Also owned by VA) shares a new Web site launched last week called OSvids.com, that shows video clips of Linux distributions in action."

GamePolitics reports that M-rated games have been taken as evidence a case involving the death of a 55-year old man in Louisiana. The connection? Jack Thompson says: "Nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hitman or a videogamer." GP goes on to point out the lunacy of this claim. From the site: "Funny, that. A quick Google search on 'shot in the face' turns up 921,000 entries."

music_lover writes "According to this article, Lenovo is losing current ThinkPad series customers to HP, Toshiba and other notebook vendors because of customer perception. Apparently, customers don't feel comfortable purchasing from a Chinese PC manufacturer now that the ThinkPad brand isn't supported by IBM anymore. Could this really be perception? Quote: "Despite the overall poor performance, Lenovo has still not gained the mindshare or the respect that the ThinkPads command. In fact, it has, to some extent, alienated ThinkPad's fans and taken a sales hit. In my immediate vicinity, those who owned ThinkPads have now traded up to an HP or a Toshiba. None of them went back to their ThinkPads. After asking for a clarification, I was told, "Who wants to buy things from a Chinese company?" That said, our corporate parent has continued to buy/use Thinkpads; the ones that I've seen do just fine, and they've added new machines and a parternership with AMD.

SR71 writes "Tom's Hardware has a strong debate between two of its editors in a face-off editorial about female gamers." From the article: "I'm not being puritanical - heck, a while ago I wrote about wanting to see more sex in videogames. Neither is this about being against female gamers. I simply take issue with people falling and fawning over these female gamers, and talking high-mindedly about how professional female e-sports will soon be on a par with the male circuit." The article contans some crass language that may be NSFW.